Bartelby Review
...e. While working in an isolated work area may believe to be more work efficient and proficient, Herman describes through his superb POV and plot the obvious social and mental risks of being a scrivener. Being a scrivener must consist of copying documents for someone, as they had no copy machines in those days. You can see the great amount of work is needed if there is a lot of copying needed. Almost like an answer to the narrator’s prayers for help, “…a motionless young man one morning stood upon my office threshold, the door being open, for it was summer. I can that figure now—pallidly near pitiably respectable, incurably forlorn! It was Bartleby.” After the narrator tells of interviewing Bartleby and finding out that he is qualified for the job, you get the idea that Bartleby is impecunious by the narrators precisely used diction for Bartleby. In the beginning Bartleby does a great amount of work as it is stated in the story, “At first, Bartleby did an extraordinary quantity of writing. As if long famishing for something to copy, he seemed to gorge himself on documents. There was no pause for digestion. He ran a day and night line, copying by sunlight and by candlelight.” As the story moves on Herman writes his story at a slower pace, forcing the reader to stay connected. With Herman’s great use of detail and syntax he make it more interesting. Herman also uses he fantastic use of syntax to show the changing of the narrator’s tone as he progresses through the story. In the beginning it is apparent that the narrator is friendlier, but when he meets Bartleby you start to see that Bartleby’s attitude rubs off on the narrator. The narrator’s tone becomes more serious and less welcoming as it did in the beginning. As Bartleby goes into a mental breakdown from his slow de-socialization process the many reasons why he had a breakdown. For example, “I placed hi desk close up to a small side window in that part of the room, a window which originally had afforded later view of certain grimy back yards and bricks, but which owing to subsequent erections, commanded at present no view at all, though it gave some light. Within three feet if the panes was a wall, and the light came from far above between two lofty buildings, as from a very small opening in a dome, still further to a satisfactory arrangement, I procured a high green folding screen, which might entirely isolate Bartleby from my sight.” Obviously this was a catastrophe waiting to happen. Who would want to be separated...