Reading Notes W7: Bartleby, Part B

Herman Melville, “Bartleby, the Scrivener” (293-321)

Scriveners- a clerk, scribe, or notary.

Turkey:

·         Fiery

·         Self-indulgent

·         Clothes often looked oily and smelled of eating houses

·         Pants were worn loose and baggy (in the summertime)

·         Rash, noisy, difficult to control

·         Ate many cakes

·         Copyist

·         Short and pursy

·         Englishman

·         Not far from sixty

·         “there was a strange, inflamed, flurried, flighty recklessness of activity about him” (298)

·         Before twelve o’clock he was the quickest and steadiest person; very valuable before this time.

·         Could be seen as a morning person

Nippers:

·         Whiskered, sallow

·         Copyist

·         Piratical-looking= maybe pirate-like? Definition online says pertaining to or similar to pirates

·         25= “Five and Twenty”

·         Impatient

·         “I always deemed him the victim of two evil powers-ambition and indigestion” (299)

·         Didn’t know what he wanted

·         Very useful

·         Wrote neat

·         Gentlemanly when he chose

·         Temperate, flighty temper

·         Irritable and nervous

·         Different to Turkey: “Their fits relieved each other like guards. When Nippers’ was on, Turkey’s was off; and vice versa” (300)

Ginger Nut:

·         Twelve-years old

·         Office-boy

·         His father was a railway car mechanic

·         Sent as a student at law, errand boy, cleaner and sweeper

·         Cake and apple purveyor for Turkey and Nippers

·         “they sent Ginger Nut very frequently for that peculiar cake-small, flat, round, and very spicy-after which he had been named by them” (301)

Bartleby:

·         Pallidly neat

·         Pitiably respectable

·         Lonely, hopeless

·         Quiet

·         Workaholic: “As if long-famishing for something to copy, he seemed to gorge himself on my documents” (301)

·         Copyist

·         “but he wrote on silently, palely, mechanically” (301)

·         Expected to be obedient-but isn’t

·         Not considered to be ordinarily human

·         He was always at work

·         Peculiar

·         Used phrase “I prefer not to” often

·         mysterious

·         Different compared to others: “I was quite sure he never visited any refectory or eating house; while his pale face clearly indicated that he never drank beer like Turkey, or tea and coffee even, like other men” (308).

·         pitiful