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“I can see that figure now— pallidly neat, pitiably respectable, incurably forlorn! It was Bartleby.”
This is the first description that the reader gets of Bartleby and it sets up Bartleby’s characterization for the rest of the narrative. Right from the start, Melville describes Bartleby as a distressing soul. For example, the positive adjectives used to describe Bartleby (“neat,” “respectable”) are paired with negative ones (“pallidly,” “pitiably”). Even the phrase “I can see that figure now” has an unsettling air because it makes Bartleby sound like a memory or an apparition as opposed to a human being—something that is additionally relevant because Bartleby is repeatedly compared to a ghost or spirit throughout the text.
“I now recalled all the quiet mysteries which I had noted in the man. I remembered that he never spoke but to answer; that though at intervals he had considerable time to himself, yet I had never seen him reading—no, not even a newspaper; that for long periods he would stand looking out, at his pale window behind the screen, upon the dead brick wall; I was quite sure he never visited any refectory or eating house; while his pale face clearly indicated that he never drank beer like Turkey, or tea and coffee even, like other men; that he never went anywhere in particular that I could learn; never went out for a walk, unless indeed that was the case at present; that he had declined telling who he was, or whence he came, or whether he had any relatives in the world; that though so thin and pale, he never complained of ill health.”
Here, the Lawyer reflects on the various observations that he has made about Bartleby during his time as an employee in the Lawyer’s practice. All of these observations from Bartleby’s silence to his lack of hobbies to his apparent lack of relations characterize Bartleby as someone who does not engage in the world around him. Furthermore, Bartleby’s disinterest in food and the Lawyer’s emphasis on Bartleby's “thin and pale” frame make Bartleby seem like a man who already has one foot in the grave. He may be physically alive, but he has cut himself off from any display of vitality.
