“I think I’m a better ghost than I am a human being, because I am still living, but have already begun to haunt.” -The Magician, Ingmar Bergman.

“He [Bartleby] now persists in haunting the building generally, sitting upon the banisters of the stairs by day and sleeping in the entry by night.” p.29

Bartleby worked in the Dead Letters Office, maybe he assumed the role of death for himself, lost himself as a living human. He prefers not to speak, to work, to move, to eat; he has begun to haunt. This could also relate to the spiritual nature in which the narrator empathizes with him. “I might give alms to his body, but his body did not pain him--it was his soul that suffered, and his soul I could not reach.” In regards to the ‘purpose’ of Bartleby in the narrators life the narrator refers to himself as a ‘mortal’, who cannot begin to fathom the ‘mystery’ of Bartleby’s presence. Bartleby is a human who exists as a nonentity in the narrators space, “Yes, Bartleby, stay there behind your screen, thought I; I shall persecute you no more; you are harmless and noiseless as any of these old chairs; in short, I never feel so private as when I know you are here. At last I see it, I feel it; I penetrate to the predestinated purpose of my life.” Also in his narration he speaks directly to Bartleby but he is not being vocal.