Who is immoral: Bartleby or the narrator? At first glance, the narrator in Melville’s “Bartleby, the scrivener” goes out of his way to be sensitive to Bartleby's needs, beginning with the narrator's allowing him to refrain from certain duties, to refraining from all his duties, to letting him make his office his lodgings, to offering him beyond what he owes Bartleby and securing him another position, to even inviting him to live with him in the lawyer's own home. However, the in reality everything he does is out of self-interest and is immoral. As becomes evident in the course of the narrative, this new religion posits money as its only value, expediency and self-interest as its only morality. To start off, the narrator describes himself as "an eminently safe man" (p. 20 and says that he has "a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best" (p. 20). He is a firm supporter of the capitalist system and men like John Astor who are essentially motivated by self interest and profit. He w He vainly talks about how “he was not unemployed” by the famous businessman John Astor, a man who he clearly admires and who’s name "rings like unto bullion" (p. 20). While he seems to try to connect with his employees and see them as human beings, in reality they are nothing more to him resources to be exploited. He talks about the individual failing of his other two employees Turkey and Nippers, but admits that they are useful to him in spite of their idiosyncrasies. He refers to Turkey as a "most valuable person to me" (p. 22) and to Nippers as "a very useful man to me" (p. 25). Even Ginger Nut, the office boy, is useful in that "his duty as cake and apple purveyor" (p. 27) pacifies Turkey and Nippers and thus keeps them working. In other words, the lawyer considers his employees useful insofar as he can exploit them and make money from their labor. When he needs to hire a new scrivener, Bartleby, he describes him as a "motionless young man," "pallidly neat,...