Bartleby the Scrivner

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"I am a rather elderly man," says the lawyer-narrator of "Bartleby" (p. 984), and thus begins a tale which is full of contradictions and gaps and which has been read in various and apparently opposite ways. By introducing his story in the first person using "I am,” the lawyer mimics not only the power of God but also the originary gesture of all biographies the idea that the self is knowable.
Having made this gesture, however, the narrator undermines it, for he equivocates, then denies that the self is at all knowable. This pattern is repeated throughout the story in relation to all the characters the lawyer attempts to characterize, including himself. For example, he says that although he could tell us a thing or two about other scriveners he has known, he will concentrate on Bartleby, the "strangest" scrivener he ever saw. However, he then admits the following:
While of other law-copyists [scriveners] I might write the complete life, of Bartleby nothing of that sort can be done. I believe that no materials exist for a full and satisfactory biography of this man. Bartleby was one of those beings of which nothing is ascertainable except from the original sources, and, in his case, those are very small. What my own astonished eyes saw of Bartleby that is all I know of him, except, indeed, one vague report, which will appear in the sequel. (p. 984)

In effect, the lawyer is telling us that although he wants to tell Bartleby's story, he cannot because not much is known about him. His story then becomes an admission that he knows very little about Bartleby.
The lawyer reveals the "real" purpose of his story when he says, "Ere introducing the scrivener, as he first appeared to me, it is fit I make some mention of myself" (p. 984). One could argue that narratives are always about the narrator, especially first-person narrators, and that this narrative proves to be no exception. The lawyer continues in this vein by giving us a su...