"Eh! - He's asleep, ain't he?"
"With kings and counsellors, murmured I."
"Tallahassee 1903 Governors Desk-by Infrogmation" WikiMedia Commons
With these words, we are left knowing that Bartleby is now dead and so is a part of the narrator.
The narrator has taken great pains throughout the story to describe in great detail everything and everyone around him and also his own upbringing and personality. Bartleby is introduced without the same detail, however. We begin to wonder if there is anything different about Bartleby.
After Bartleby begins to "prefer not to" do so many things in the workplace, we realize that there is, indeed, something different about him. He has the characteristics that most employees wish we could display at certain times and represents the narrator's true personality in many ways.
At the end of the story, we realize that such a laid-back type of worker who does not conform and buy into how society defines the employer-employee relationship, is doomed. When Bartleby dies, any hope that the narrator has of retaining his humanity in a sea of workers using their labors as a commodity, dies with him.
Hey Vincent,
ReplyDeleteI really thought your perspective of this story was very heartfelt and full of emotional view. You really brought out the anguish that the narrator endured during his personal encounter with Bartleby. However, do you truly believe out of this story the narrator was left with personal torment because he cared that much for a stranger who once worked for him? Or that perhaps his personal fixation drove him to unknown questions that left him with no answer that drove him to a personal emptiness or puzzlement?