Bartelby, the Scrivener / Herman Melville

The story is told in a first person point of view of the lawyer who hired Bartelby.  This point of view provides a disconnect with Bartelby. It makes it so that we don’t know the past of Bartelby or any of his thought. Not knowing Bartelby’s thoughts make him more strange and hard to understand.  Making the lawyer the narrator gives us a close up opinion of Bartelby from someone else in the story. “Doubtless I should have violently dismissed him from the premises. But as it was, I should have as soon thought of turning my pale plaster-of-paris bust of Cicero out of doors” (Melville 650).  I thing it is the Lawyers fault for not firing Bartleby sooner or forcing him to work that caused him to get worse and stop working altogether.  If the lawyer would have forced Bartelby to act he might have come out of is delusional state.  At the end of the story when the lawyer mentions were Bartelby previously worked he says Bartelby was not fired until new management took over.  Maybe the old manager had the same opinion of Bartelby that the lawyer did which is why he had his job for so long.