When reading the story, “Bartleby, the Scrivener”, I found that there was a little bit of irony. I thought that the narrator’s perspective was fun to read (for lack of a better way to phrase it) and I thought that he had a lot of interesting thoughts that we got to hear through the writing. At the beginning of the reading I began to highlight quotes in which the narrator was describing himself as a person, and later when reading the story, was finding a little bit of irony.

The narrator was a lawyer who was running a law practice and in the very beginning he said that he was an unambitious lawyer (1470). Initially, he had 3 workers helping him in the office and he decided he still needed more help, resulting in him hiring Bartleby. At the beginning, Bartleby seemed ambitious and was producing a lot of work, which was funny to me as the lawyer he was working under had stated himself to be unambitious. The narrator had also pointed out Bartleby’s ambitions saying, “”I always deemed him the victim of two evil powers — ambition and indigestion,” (pg 1472). However, when Bartleby stopped working as much and was “preferring not to do things”, the lawyer wanted him to begin working hard again; which I understood better as wanting to reinstate Bartleby’s ambitions, even while he claimed he was unambitious as a practicing lawyer. 

In addition to wanting to reinstate ambitions, I found it slightly humorous to read about him having conversations trying to get Bartleby to begin working again. One of the very first quotes that I highlighted was when the narrator said, “I am a man who, from his youth upwards, has been filled with proud conviction that the easiest way of life is best,” (pg 1460). This quote I thought about a lot when reading conversations between Bartleby and the narrator, as when you think about it, it was easier for Bartleby not to write/do his work, and the narrator had stated he thought the easiest way of life was best. 

Overall, I thought that this story was fun to read, and I found myself finding the conversations between the narrator and Bartleby more funny to read rather than frustrating (the narrator had also stated that he would seldom get frustrated, although when reading the text it seemed to me that he was very often frustrated with Bartleby). But when reading I enjoyed finding little parts of the text, that to me, seemed to have some underlaying irony.