He also describes Bartleby as "motionless." The narrator hopes Bartleby's quietness will calm the hot tempers of the other two copyists. He is a pale and miserable-looking man: "I can see that figure now pallidly neat, pitiably respectable, incurably forlorn" (11). Ginger Nut, the office boy, is a lad of twelve whose nickname comes from the ginger nut cakes he fetches for the men.īartleboy responds to an ad the narrator put in the paper. Thus Turkey is productive while Nippers is foul-tempered, and Nippers is productive while Turkey is drunk. But because his irritation is caused by indigestion, his irritability wanes as the day goes on. Though not a drinker, young Nippers' natural temperament is so irritable that it hardly matters. Nippers, the second copyist, is "the victim of two evil powers ambition and indigestion" (9). When drunk, he's brash and over-enthusiastic. From that point on, he is less than productive, but the narrator's attempts to send him home early have never met with success. Turkey is productive in the mornings, but he's drunk by noon. Two copyists and an office boy work for the narrator at the time before Bartleby's arrival. On the other side, the view is of a brick wall.
#Papers scrivener 3 windows#
On one side, the windows look on the interior of a light shaft. The offices of our story are on Wall Street.
In an aside, the narrator says that he considers the elimination of the post a premature act, particularly since he'd counted on the lifelong security guaranteed by the job. A short time before the central story begins, the narrator had been appointed Master in Chancery, a position that has since been eliminated. He takes no risks: ""All who know me, consider me an eminently safe man" (4).
Though a lawyer, he never goes before juries or judges: he runs a business dealing with rich men's bonds, mortgages, and title deeds. Of himself, he says that he is a man always convinced that the easiest path is best. Before he gets into Bartleby's story, he introduces himself and the other employees of his office. The elderly narrator promises to relate what he knows about a peculiar man, one Bartleby, a scrivener (copying clerk) who worked for him some time ago.
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