Bartleby the Scrivener In the short story written by Herman Melville, the antagonist, Bartleby has three profound character traits. He’s stubborn, isolated and very mysterious.

Bartleby is a scrivener or a legal copyist for a lawyer in his mid sixties. Bartleby suffered from mental unstableness this greatly affected his work. He is very stubborn and always replies with his trademark sentence “I prefer not to,” throughout the story when the lawyer asked him to complete a task in the law firm. No matter how much the lawyer pleaded, Bartleby refused to copy anything and remained as stubborn as ever. When the lawyer moved his firm and Bartleby remained the tenants became very upset and said “he refuses to do any copying, he refuses to do anything he prefers not and he refuses to quite the premises” this quote portrays bartlebys’ stubborn characteristic traits. “Meanwhile bartleby sat in his hermitage, oblivious to everything but his own particular business there.” Bartleby is only separated from the office by a screen yet he still manages to completely shut himself in. This demonstrates his ability to create his own isolated world. Bartlebys’ quite nature isolates him from the rest of the characters in the story. Bartleby was a very mysterious man. He was the first to arrive at work and the last to leave. This leaves the reader wondering why? Is it because he’s trying to cover where he’s coming from and where he is headed?
One Sunday morning on whim the lawyer drops into his office on Wall Street. He