- description
- # Narrator's Internal Conflict and Attempts to Resolve the Situation
## Overview
This segment, titled "Narrator's Internal Conflict and Attempts to Resolve the Situation," is part of the short story "[Bartleby, The Scrivener](arke:01KG8AJ8SS2R5YVRHT1BCDZZNP)". It spans lines 469 to 505 of the source text and was extracted from the file "[bartleby_the_scrivener.txt](arke:01KG89J1CRGPEZ66W67EZPAMPE)". The segment details the narrator's internal struggle with Bartleby's passive resistance and his attempts to manage the situation.
## Context
This segment is situated within the larger narrative of "[Bartleby, The Scrivener](arke:01KG8AJ8SS2R5YVRHT1BCDZZNP)", a work collected under "[Melville Complete Works](arke:01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW)". It follows the segment "[Escalation of Bartleby's refusals ('I would prefer not to')](arke:01KG8AJM8RS6TKBH9ZFVQG1EM6)" and precedes the segment "[Introduction of narrator, office, and existing staff](arke:01KG8AJM8RSWPH5R13TJSKN510)".
## Contents
The narrator reflects on his attempts to understand and cope with Bartleby's passive resistance, initially attributing it to harmless eccentricities. He considers the moral satisfaction of "befriending" Bartleby, but also admits to moments of irritation. This internal conflict culminates in a direct confrontation where the narrator asks Bartleby to compare copied papers, to which Bartleby replies, "I would prefer not to." The narrator then appeals to Turkey and Nippers for their opinions on Bartleby's behavior.
- description_generated_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:04.909Z
- description_model
- gemini-2.5-flash-lite
- description_title
- Narrator's Internal Conflict and Attempts to Resolve the Situation
- end_line
- 505
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:47:37.562Z
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- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 469
- text
- Nothing so aggravates an earnest person as a passive resistance. If the
individual so resisted be of a not inhumane temper, and the resisting
one perfectly harmless in his passivity; then, in the better moods of
the former, he will endeavor charitably to construe to his imagination
what proves impossible to be solved by his judgment. Even so, for the
most part, I regarded Bartleby and his ways. Poor fellow! thought I, he
means no mischief; it is plain he intends no insolence; his aspect
sufficiently evinces that his eccentricities are involuntary. 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 starve. Yes.
Here I can cheaply purchase a delicious self-approval. To befriend
Bartleby; to humor him in his strange willfulness, will cost me little
or nothing, while I lay up in my soul what will eventually prove a
sweet morsel for my conscience. But this mood was not invariable with
me. The passiveness of Bartleby sometimes irritated me. I felt
strangely goaded on to encounter him in new opposition, to elicit some
angry spark from him answerable to my own. But indeed I might as well
have essayed to strike fire with my knuckles against a bit of Windsor
soap. But one afternoon the evil impulse in me mastered me, and the
following little scene ensued:
“Bartleby,” said I, “when those papers are all copied, I will compare
them with you.”
“I would prefer not to.”
“How? Surely you do not mean to persist in that mulish vagary?”
No answer.
I threw open the folding-doors near by, and turning upon Turkey and
Nippers, exclaimed in an excited manner—
“He says, a second time, he won’t examine his papers. What do you think
of it, Turkey?”
- title
- Narrator's internal conflict and attempts to resolve the situation