Discuss the Changes in the Lawyer and in His Motivation Throughout the Course of His Acquaintance with Bartleby

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“The passiveness of Bartleby sometimes irritated me. I felt strangely goaded on to encounter him in new opposition— to elicit some angry spark from him answerable to my own.”

In this passage, he see how the lawyer tries many ways to get Bartleby to go, he refuses, which makes the lawyer very angry. Even though Bartleby is harmless, he has some power over the lawyer which then affects the way that the lawyer acts in the story. Bartleby is always calm and is always self-assured, unlike the lawyer who is always tightly wound and unsure of himself. It seems as though Bartleby almost brushes a little bit of that calmness and confidence on the lawyer as the story progresses. The lawyer changes because of this and the relationship portrayed between the two helps us to better understand that.

“What I saw that morning persuaded me that the scrivener was the victim of innate and incurable disorder. I might give alms to his body; but his body did not pain him; it was his soul that suffered, and his soul I could not reach.”

This passage truly shows the sympathy that the lawyer develops as the story progresses. It is seen that the lawyer cannot comprehend the internal struggle that Bartleby has gone through, mostly brought on by the sickness that Wall Street gives to people. The lawyer feels that it is his ultimate responsibility to keep an eye on Bartleby, even though it was evident in the beginning of the story that he did not care so much about him at all. It is almost like an obsession of the lawyer to constantly worry about Bartleby and to constantly see how he is doing, but it is not odd that he feels sorry for him, and the internal struggle that he is going through. This passage illuminates the question because it shows that very sympathy that the lawyer has towards Bartleby towards the end of the story.

Ultimate Implications

As humans, we sometimes make very complex choices out of very simple things. We don’t always do what society thinks is acceptable, which most of the time leads to a different outcome. In Bartleby the Scrivener, we learn that our own capacity for the choices we make and our own independent thoughts, can sometimes lead to dangerous things, which lead to, sometimes, very horrible consequences.