![]() ![]() This irritability and restlessness, while annoying to the narrator, is balanced out by his “neat, swift hand and…gentlemanly sort of deportment” (4) and only ails Nippers in the morning-allowing the narrator to empathize with Nippers’ disability and not deem him unfit to work. Nippers’ indigestion manifests as “occasional nervous testiness and grinning irritability, causing the teeth to audibly grind together over mistakes committed in copying unnecessary maledictions, hissed, rather than spoken… and especially by a continual discontent with the height of the table where he worked” (4-5). Similarly, Turkey’s coworker Nippers also suffers from a disorder visibly noticeable to the narrator. The narrator tries to accommodate Turkey’s disability by proposing he go home after noon, however, Turkey refuses and convinces his boss that his disorder does not hinder his ability to do his job. ![]() Despite the “strange, inflamed, flurried, flighty recklessness of activity about ” (3) that persists for half the day, the narrator considers him invaluable and excuses his disability due to the quality of work he produces in the morning. Turkey, an elderly man like the narrator, experiences his “ blaz like a grate full of Christmas coals” (3) every day by noon until the evening, drastically impacting his temper and workmanship. His copyists Nippers and Turkey both suffer from extremely visible disorders which occasionally hinder their productivity. Melville initially presents his narrator as an elderly man who sympathizes with his physically disabled employees. The inability of the narrator to empathize with Bartleby’s invisible disability and desire to instantly cure him presents a critique on society’s ignorance of depression and response to mental impairments. When these fail, the narrator fluctuates between pity and intolerance, never truly understanding Bartleby’s condition, and only accommodating him when believing him to have a physical disability. Driven mad by Bartleby’s preferred phrase, “I would prefer not to” (Melville 8), the narrator fails to recognize this phrase as what Mitchell and Snyder’s Narrative Prosthesis could label as a subconscious cry for help, and instead tries half-hearted attempts at curing Bartleby. Having only encountered visible, physical disabilities before, the narrator does not know how to respond to a man with depression. Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, The Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street” presents the mentally troubled title character through the perspective of an ignorant narrator.
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