Prompt: What emotional response does Bartleby elicit from the narrator? Provide a text example of an interaction between the two that illustrates one of these reactions and explain.
Bartleby elicits an unarticulated sort of frustration from the Boss (which is what I'll refer to him as for the remainder of this blog post- as his name is never mentioned in the short story) that eats at him till he feels guilty for his anger. If you did a close reading of the passages therein, you might have noticed that there were a number of boundary problems between the Boss and Bartleby.
Bartleby would prefer not to look over his copies
- Anyone in their right mind would not have dealt with the insolence of this unexplained "eccentricity" of Bartleby's. Not only does the Boss not wield the power of the paycheck, but he also allows himself to be sequestered into an acquiescent position of powerlessness. It is not hard to imagine that the Boss feels emasculated by his experiences with Bartleby.
Bartleby turns the Boss' office into an apartment
- If someone in their right mind had managed to shrug off these issues with Bartleby, then the incident of finding him convert the copyist office into his home would have certainly been the last straw. But it's not. The Boss' pity, the "human side", gets the best of him and he is not able to say "no" to Bartleby in an assertive and meaningful manner. The Boss' boundaries, at this point, should have been backed up with concrete consequences- such as a situation involving the police (which is what happened in the end anyway).
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