Bartleby Close Reading

"He is useful to me. I can get along with him. If I turn him away, the chances are he will fall in with some less indulgent employer, and then he will be rudely treated, and perhaps driven forth miserably to to starve. Yes. Here I can cheaply purchase a delicious self-approval. To befriend Bartleby; to humor him in his strange wilfulness, will cost me little or nothing, while I lay up in my soul what will eventually prove a sweet morsel for my conscience." (p53)
The narrator tried befriending Bartleby but was unsuccessful. This quote made it seem like the narrator was concerned for Bartleby. Bartleby didn't seem to want to go anywhere else to work, even later in the story when the narrator was trying to get him to leave and trying to find him other work he turned all other locations down. I felt like the narrator wanted to understand why Bartleby was refusing to do the work and what was going on with him but didn't know how to go about getting him to open up. He seemed more interested in Bartleby than he did in any of his other employees. That could be because Bartleby was the defiant and refusing to do what he was paid to do and then refusing to leave.

Pablo Sanchez from Prague, Czech Republic