“Bartleby, the Scriver” is narrated by the Lawyer who once employed Bartleby. This employer-employee power dynamic alone raises questions about the reliability of the Lawyer’s narration, as do many of the Lawyer’s omissions. For example, he feels comfortable sharing Bartleby’s name but never his own, and also hides the identities of his other employees via nicknames—Turkey, Nippers, and Ginger Nut.
These elisions raise questions about what, exactly, the Lawyer may be trying to hide. Though the Lawyer does not come across as an antagonist, it is clear throughout the narrative that he feels a certain amount of guilt and responsibility about what happened to Bartleby. For example, even after Bartleby refuses to do the work he was hired for, refuses to leave the office after he was fired, and refuses to take steps to avoid going to prison, the Lawyer still tries to help Bartleby, going as far as paying the grub-man at the prison to make Bartleby special food. This leaves readers wondering how this type of guilt-infused caretaking might be influencing how the Lawyer is telling the story to make himself look better in the wake of Bartleby’s death.
Near the end of the story, the Lawyer also shares information about Bartleby that he has not confirmed to be true:
Yet here I hardly know whether I should divulge one little item of rumor, which came to my ear a few months after the scrivener’s decease. Upon what basis it rested, I could never ascertain; and hence, how true it is I cannot now tell. But inasmuch as this vague report has not been without a certain strange suggestive interest to me, however sad, it may prove the same with some others; and so I will briefly mention it.
Though the narrator acknowledges that he “could never ascertain” the validity of this “one little item of rumor” (that Bartleby used to work for the Dead Letter Office), he still shares it and goes on to draw conclusions about Bartleby based on it. Here Melville encourages readers once again to question the Lawyer’s reliability as a narrator.
