Virtual Intercourse: A Scrivener's Experience in the Non-Being
             Starting with the narrator's claim that he was going to relate a story about Bartleby, "the strangest [scrivener] I ever saw or heard of," Melville begins a juxtaposition where everything but Bartleby is discussed in some detail. The resulting circumvention causes Bartleby to be discussed more as a causal force than as a human. While the narrator admits he has limited information about Bartleby, he makes little effort throughout the course of the story to discover anything about him. He appears oblivious to Bartleby's slow deterioration from that of a mournful soul to a mechanistic being whose relevance has ended. Rather, he spends the majority of the time dwelling on how Bartleby's severely limited but profound intercourse with the inhabitants of the office greatly affects the narrator's own life.
             To the narrator, Bartleby is much less a real man than an object of curiosity. He is so taken with Bartleby's limited responses, mostly containing some variation of the word "prefer," that he never contemplates what human experience could place a man in such a position. This is demonstrated by the narrator passing up each opportunity to query a little further into the psyche of Bartleby. On the Sunday when he caught Bartleby locked within his chambers, the narrator does not stake out the doorway in an attempt to see if Bartleby was alone or with company. He instead obeys Bartleby's wish that he walk around the block several times. For a lawyer, the narrator spends a tremendous amount of time analyzing his own being and precious little time evaluating Bartleby.
             There are three times in the story that the narrator appears to try and aid Bartleby. The first is when he visits him in the stairwell and attempts to offer alternate work options. The second is when he pays the prison guard a little silver to provide Bartleby with edible food. The final incidence is when he stops by...