I believe this narrator pays attention to details of how the scriveners he hired got their nick names and attitudes with preciseness. These statements lead me to believe this, “It was fortunate for me, that owing to its peculiar cause –indigestion- the irritability and consequent nervousness of Nippers, were mainly observable in the morning, while in the afternoon he was comparatively mild. So that Turkey’s paroxysms only coming on about twelve o’clock, I never had to do with their eccentricities at one time.” Since the narrator pays attention so much it helps us to understand that the story will develop slowly and why Bartleby makes him so curious. One of the main characters in the story is Bartleby. From details in the story like when his boss asks him to look over the things he copied and he refuses, you can tell he is not going to do anything he does not want to whether it is his job unless you force him. Bartleby makes one change by the end of the story and that is he will not talk to Mr. B. anymore. His character is negative because he does not do the things his boss needs him to like go to the post office, go over his work, or leave. This shocks his employer at first but ends up frustrating him. For example, “I was now in such a state of nervous resentment that I thought it prudent to check myself at present from further demonstrations.” I think the setting of a lawyer’s office gives off the feeling of normalness. This helps the story because you can quickly identify that it will not be. One of the details that help me see a scene is when he describes the interior of his office after hiring Bartleby. He says “I should have stated before that ground glass folding doors divided my premises into two parts, one of which was occupied by my scriveners, the other by myself.” This helps me to envision the office so clearly because when I was younger my dad had an apartment with those same kinds of doors. The conflict in this story is that the lawyer hires a scrivener who is not compliant. By the end of the story the lawyer resolves his conflict by separating himself from the employee to a new office building. You still wonder why the employee acts so weird and always prefers not to say or do things that seem normal to the reader. This story made me want to know more about individuals. For instance, what they have gone through to make them who they are? I think this would help people communicate better. The part that created this effect for me was when he said, “….let me say that if this little narrative has sufficiently interest him, to awaken curiosity as to who Bartleby was and what manner of life he led prior to the present narrator’s making his acquaintance, I can only reply, that in such curiosity I fully share, but am wholly unable to gratify it.”

Melville, Herman. "Bartleby, the Scrivener" The Norton Introduction To Literature. 10th ed. ED. Alison Booth and Kelly J. Mays. New York: Norton, 2010. 367-396. Print.