Bartleby September 22, 2005

It is amazing how two people with similar backgrounds can be complete polar opposites. Say for example, you meet a set of twins. One twin is fat and the other is skinny; one is a boy and the other is a girl; one likes blue and the other likes red. They're completely different, yet so alike. Herman Melville uses this concept throughout his story Bartleby the Scrivener to develop his characters of Bartleby, the speaker, Turkey, and Nipper. He creates a mirror image between each set of characters to portray how obviously different they are, yet extremely alike.

The author spends a lot of time throughout the story describing the two main characters of Turkey and Nippers. The two men, much like the twins, are exactly the same yet completely different. Nippers and Turkey have different personalities, but in seemingly the same...