Who Is The Protagonist In Bartleby The Scrivener

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Bartleby, the Scrivener Throughout the novella Bartleby, the Scrivener by Herman Melville the main character, the lawyer, undergoes a change of personality. With this change, he starts treating his employees poorly and immorally. Due to this, he may have caused a fatal tragedy that he could have possibly prevented. The lawyer changes throughout the novella from a cautious, unambitious, prudent, and obedient character to treating people immorally and capitalistically which caused the downfall of another character. The introduction to the book presents to us a character that is selfish and has a narrow, work-like personality. This character, the lawyer, provides descriptors of himself that he believes to be true. Of which includes unambitious,…show more content…
When describing these people, he touches on the appearances of each of them, not precisely detailing them. “The ambition was evinced by a certain impatience of the duties of a mere copyist, an unwarrantable usurpation of strictly professional affairs.” (Page 7). Instead of gaining a deeper understanding of these characters through a depiction of their personalities or personal lives, a majority of the descriptions include the productivity of each worker. He tells us how productive and effective each worker is and each person’s working habits as precisely as what time each person works best. “Indeed, not only would he be reckless and sadly given to making blots in the afternoon, but some days he went further, and was rather noisy.” (Page 6). Even when Bartleby is introduced as a brand new character, the lawyer fails to give us a proper description. He does not give us a single appearance of Bartleby, no personality traits or anything personal. What he does do though is dive into how productive and hard-working Bartleby is. This presentation of his employees show that the lawyer is more focused on productivity and making money than developing a compassionate relationship with his
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