"I am a rather elderly man," says the lawyer-narrator of "Bartleby" (p. 984), and thus begins a tale which is full of contradictions and gaps and which has been read in various and apparently opposite ways. By introducing his story in the first person using "I am,” the lawyer mimics not only the power of God but also the originary gesture of all biographies the idea that the self is knowable. Having made this gesture, however, …showed first 75 words of 883 total…

…showed last 75 words of 883 total…dies curled up against a prison wall of "amazing thickness" (p. 1009). This symbolic interpretation of Wall Street is exemplified in the lawyer's analysis of his employee's characters. Whatever his own aspirations, the lawyer obviously cannot afford to employ scriveners other than those who are themselves at the bottom end of the scale. For all the comedy of the lawyer's descriptions, the image of them treading water in the effluent of the cistern (system) is inescapable.