bartleby begins to haveba kind of power over the narrator

The narrator senses that there are parallels between himself and the scrivener, and Bartleby's gloom infects him: "Before, I had never experienced aught but a not unpleasing sadness. The bond of a common humanity now drew me irresistibly to gloom. A fraternal melancholy! For both I and Bartleby were sons of Adam" (23). Bartleby's plight draws the narrator into depths of feeling that he did not know he was capable of. Part of Bartleby's power over the narrator is that he somehow sees Bartleby as a part of himself. He, too, has been forced to adapt to the business world. But while he has adapted and gone through the consequent numbing (previous unable to feel more than a "not unpleasing sadness"), Bartleby has been bludgeoned to exhaustion. Nothing pleases him about this world. The narrator, at different times, wants to help Bartleby.