The mood of “Bartleby, the Scrivener” starts out humorous, then becomes frustrating, ultimately ending up in an eerie and unsettling place. The beginning of the story is clearly comical, as the Lawyer dedicates pages and pages to describing how poor his employees are at their jobs: Turkey can only get work done before he gets drunk at lunchtime, while Nippers is only productive after lunch when he is not experiencing indigestion. Even after the Lawyer hires Bartleby and Bartleby starts refusing to perform certain duties (such as copyediting his work), the mood is still funny, feeling more like a comedy of errors than a dark tale.
The mood starts to shift, of course, as Bartleby’s passive resistance becomes more and more extreme. Suddenly his odd behavior is less funny and more concerning and confusing. Readers align themselves with the Lawyer at this point as his patience with Bartleby turns into pity and then into anger. The mood of the story becomes hostile as the Lawyer must figure out how to rid himself of Bartleby while also feeling responsible for the man at the same time. This frustrated, conflicted mood comes across in the following passage, when the Lawyer declares that either Bartleby leaves the office or the Lawyer will move his office (complete with his other employees) elsewhere:
“Stationary you shall be then,” I cried, now losing all patience, and for the first time in all my exasperating connection with him fairly flying into a passion. “If you do not go away from these premises before night, I shall feel bound—indeed I am bound—to—to—to quit the premises myself!” I rather absurdly concluded, knowing not with what possible threat to try to frighten his immobility into compliance.
The angry mood comes across in the way the lawyer stutters while yelling at Bartleby—“indeed I am bound—to—to—to quit the premises myself!”—as well as in his description of how he was, at this point, “fairly flying into a passion.”
The mood shifts one more time at the end of the story when the Lawyer visits Bartleby in prison and finds that he is slowly starving to death, having refused to eat any of the special food that the Lawyer is paying for him to have access to while in the Tombs. After Bartleby dies, the mood is quite eerie and somber as the Lawyer and readers together wonder why someone would resist help to such an extent.
