"I prefer not to," also tells the reader about Bartleby isolating himself. The phrase shows his lack of involvement, another form of isolation. The narrator tells the reader exactly what he did to Bartleby, very vividly, as shown below. In the novella, the author tells the reader, down to the smallest detail, what he did to Bartleby to isolate him from the world. He tells us in this passage, "I placed his desk close up to a small side window in that part of the room, a window which originally had afforded a lateral view of certain grimy backy ....