The Scrivener is told from the point of view of a Manhattan lawyer who runs an interesting office, to say the least. The story focuses on the relationship between the Narrator and a new Scrivener (copyist) that he hires for his office, named Bartleby. It is unclear where or how the Narrator finds this man, but that is not the issue until later in the story, when things take a strange turn. Bartleby was a fine employee, compared to the others in the office that had their own flaws, such as only being good workers for half of the days at a time. A pattern develops within the office when the Narrator asks Bartleby to do mundane tasks that are not 100% related to copying. Rather than obliging to the Narrator’s requests, Bartleby replies with somewhat of a catchphrase – saying “I would prefer not to.” to every thing the Narrator asks of him.

Any normal self respecting Manhattan lawyer would be infuriated with such a response, as this is his employee refusing to do what he asks, however the Narrator, while flustered, is not infuriated enough to force or fire Bartleby for not listening to him, but rather pleads and asks why he does not want to do these mundane things. To which he simply responds back the same way, just saying he doesn’t want to do it.

The Narrator is entirely flabbergasted by such behavior, and is at the same time entirely intrigued and obsessed with Bartleby, where did he come from? Why does he refuse to listen to him? Why does he never leave the office? Does he have any family? Rather than listening to his other employees and firing Bartleby, he basically fires himself by moving offices. The Narrator does this because he cannot bare to be mean to Bartleby, because he just does not have it in him to do anything negative towards him. He even tries to bribe him with extra pay for him to leave the office, rather than simply firing him. The Narrator does not treat Bartleby as an employee, but as a concerned parent when he finds Bartleby in the office on a Sunday morning.

Bartleby ends up getting thrown into “The Tombs”, for refusing to leave the premises (the old office building). The Narrator goes out of his way to visit him and make sure he gets food while there, even though Bartleby continues his apathetic behavior, until he commits suicide by starving himself to death.

This entire story is one big paradox. Why does the Narrator, a self respecting lawyer refuse to fire Bartleby for not doing what he is asked? It is clear that Bartleby suffers from depression and has no life of his own to live – with his past being unknown to the reader and the Narrator, except for his past job which was working in the dead letter division of the post office. Could this have killed his spirit so fatally that it drove him to death? Why does the narrator keep such insufficient employees working in his office. A major theme in this story is loyalty, as the Narrator never even considers firing any of his employees for their faulty work, and that is why I believe he does the same for Bartleby.