He is an elderly drunk, productive in the mornings but sloshed by the afternoons. He ends by "preferring not to" eat, which kills him. Each time Bartleby utters it, he is refusing not only a task, but one of the rituals that make up a normal life. His trademark sentence, "I would prefer not to," marks his continuing disengagement from the world.
Life itself is pointless to him, and he cannot pretend enthusiasm for it. Bartleby is incredibly passive, quiet, never becoming angry. The pale and forlorn scrivener, or legal copyist. Through Bartleby, the narrator sees his world and the human condition in a new and unsettling way. Bartleby exerts a strange power over him: the narrator is simultaneously repulsed and moved to pity, and he is powerless to compel Bartleby to do anything.
He makes his living helping rich men deal with their legal documents, and he is convinced that the easiest path is always the best one. An elderly man, and an "eminently safe" one.
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