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Summary
The Lawyer then explains that his original business—that of a conveyancer and title hunter, and drawer-up of recondite documents—was increased after he received the master’s office. As a result, he was forced to push his existing scriveners to do the maximum amount of work in order to keep up. The Lawyer is still not satisfied with the results so he decides to hire a third scrivener. He places an ad asking for a third employee and Bartleby comes to the office to answer the ad. The Lawyer hires Bartleby and gives him a space in his own office, instead of placing him in the room with the rest of the employees, so that he could assign Bartleby tasks as quickly as possible. He does, however, set up a screen around Bartleby so that he can communicate with his new scrivener without having to constantly see him. This arrangement pleases the Lawyer because “privacy and society were conjoined.”
At first, Bartleby seems to be an excellent and efficient worker. He’s so efficient that the Lawyer compares him to a machine. He writes day and night, often by no more than candlelight. His output is enormous, and he greatly pleases the Lawyer. The Lawyer is especially impressed because he understands that copying legal documents is a “dull, wearisome, and lethargic affair” that most people would find “intolerable.”
One day, the Lawyer has a small document he needs examined. He calls Bartleby in to do the job, but Bartleby responds, “I would prefer not to.” This answer amazes the Lawyer, who can’t conceive of an employee not doing what he is told; he has a “natural expectancy of instant compliance.” In fact, he is so amazed by this response, and the calm way Bartleby says it, that he cannot even bring himself to scold Bartleby. Instead, he calls in Nippers to examine the document instead.
A few days after this incident, there is a large document (already copied by Bartleby) to be examined. This document is important because it consists of four lengthy quadruplicates of a week’s testimony taken in the High Court of Chancery. The Lawyer calls for all his employees in the other room—Turkey, Nippers, and Ginger Nut—to come into his office so that they can work on the examination. When he calls Bartleby to assist as well, the scrivener again replies that he “would prefer not to.” The Lawyer presses him, wanting to know why he refuses, but Bartleby’s answer doesn’t change. The Lawyer tells us that something in Bartleby's nature “disarmed him” and that Bartleby's steadfast refusal to do what was asked of him confounds the Lawyer. Momentarily, the Lawyer wonders if it is he who is wrong and he asks his other copyists who was in the right. All three agree that Bartleby is being unreasonable, if not downright impertinent. The Lawyer tries one last time to get Bartleby to examine the document but business hurries him and he and his workers examine the document without Bartleby, though the other scriveners mutter that they won't examine another man's document without pay ever again.
Analysis
Bartleby's initial response of "I would prefer not to," seems innocent at first, but soon it becomes a mantra, a slogan that is an essential part of Bartleby's character. It is, as the Lawyer points out, a form of "passive resistance."
Bartleby's quiet, polite, but firm refusal to do even the most routine tasks asked of him has always been the main source of puzzlement. Bartleby has been compared to philosophers ranging from Cicero, whose bust rests a few inches above the Lawyer's head in his office, to Mahatma Gandhi. His refusal of the Lawyer's requests has been read as a critique of the growing materialism of American culture at this time. It is significant that the Lawyer's office is on Wall Street; in fact, the subtitle of "Bartleby" is "A Story of Wall Street." Wall Street was at this time becoming the hub of financial activity in the United States, and Melville (as well as other authors, including Edgar Allan Poe) were quick to note the emerging importance of money and its management in American life. Under this reading, Bartleby's stubborn refusal to do what is asked of him amounts to a kind of heroic opposition to economic control.
Some critics have proposed that the Lawyer is a "collector" of sorts; that is, he collects "characters" in the from of strange scriveners: "I have known very many of them and, if I pleased, could relate [diverse] histories, at which good-natured gentlemen might smile, and sentimental souls might weep." Bartleby, then, is the "prize" of the Lawyer's collection, the finest tale: the Lawyer says, "I waive the biographies of all other scriveners for a few passages in the life of Bartleby, who was a scrivener, the strangest I ever saw, or heard of." Under this reading, the Lawyer seems a little cold in his recollection—as if Bartleby were no more than an interesting specimen of an insect. The role of the Lawyer is just one of the many hotly debated aspects of the story. Of particular interest is the question of whether the Lawyer is ultimately a friend or foe to Bartleby. His treatment of Bartleby can be read both as sympathetic, pitying, or cold, depending on one's interpretation. Some readers simply resign themselves to the fact that nothing in Melville is set in such black-and-white terms.
