ENG 102 Final Paper
The narrator’s sympathy for Bartleby is rather large due to his understanding for
others with a sort of psychological point. Throughout the whole story, the narrator, a elder
man who runs a firm dealing with mortgages, while he gets angry with Bartleby, he never
physically hurts him and always goes back to him carefully, not knowing how to
approach Bartleby next. In this essay, I will argue about how the narrator’s sympathy
shows the compassion about how a human struggles with in everyday life towards people
with a mental disability (from Bartleby, I came up with this solution). The narrator goes
through a bunch of emotions throughout the story: pity, anger, fear and frustration to
name some. A normal human who not go through all the trouble the he has gone through
but still, he tries to reason with the ex clerk from the Post Office.
In one part of the story where the narrator introduces himself and his current
employees, he finally mentions Bartleby. In short, he is a great worker at first who does
his job very well, unlike Turkey and Nippers who have set hours to how well their work
is, and he tends to work all day. While I never knew back then a worker could work after
hours and stay overnight, that was what it seem like Bartleby was doing when the
narrator saw that something was a little up. But because he was an avid employee who
did his work well, the narrator overlooked this manner. This is where I believe the
narrator started to sympathize with his new employee. A normal response would have
probably been to ask Bartleby what was the matter, to which Bartleby would have
probably been short with his answer, the narrator would have known earlier on that
something was in fact wrong with him. As soon as the narrator, surely he is male, asks
Bartleby to do another job that scriveners are supposed to do, Bartleby replies ””I would
prefer not to,” he said, and gently disappeared behind the screen.”. This makes the
narrator at first, confused and probably a bit humiliated that an employee of his would not
do the work he is told. After he asks again and is shot down a second time, the narrators
response surprises the readers as he just gets someone else to do the job. The reason why
I say his response is surprising is due to that normally people do the work that is in their
job description. The narrator’s high sympathy for the lonely scrivener seems inhuman as
well. But since this is the first offense that has happen, I guess people could understand
why instead of losing his cool, he got another to do so.
So after Bartley does another huge copying job that he was assigned to do, the
narrator asks him to check it. One would think he would just do it, but again he refuses to
do so. One would get angry at this response happening yet again but the narrator just tries
