Scissors

Scissors is the unnamed editorial assistant at the newspaper office where the narrator submits his manuscripts. His nickname, never explained in the text, suggests a function rather than a person: he clips and sorts material, a gatekeeper of the printed word whose daily labor consists of running through old papers and probing for minor items of news among provincial journals. He is the first face the narrator meets each time he enters the office, and his manner—cool, distracted, barely acknowledging the narrator's presence—establishes the emotional temperature of those visits.

Role and Routine

Scissors performs the office's most mechanical tasks. When the narrator first delivers his weighty manuscript, he finds Scissors "running through a lot of old papers" and instructs him gravely to give it into the editor's own hands as soon as he arrives. Scissors replies "All right" and busies himself again with his papers, treating the matter "somewhat too coolly" from the narrator's perspective. On a later visit, the narrator inquires timorously for the editor and receives no answer; Scissors simply sits and probes for minor items of news. When the narrator repeats his question and advances a little farther, Scissors finally says, without looking up, "The editor has not come yet." Asked how soon he would come, Scissors answers, "Couldn't say—couldn't say at all." To the question of how long the office would be open, he gives no answer at all. The narrator is forced to leave, reflecting that Scissors had not once looked up at him, had recognized him by his voice, and that he was evidently in such bad odor that the assistant did not even take the trouble to answer.

Confrontation and Defiance

Months later, when the narrator returns to the office after a long period of failure and near-starvation, he meets Scissors on the stairs. Scissors attempts to pass without acknowledging his nod, suddenly intently busied with his nails. The narrator stops him and inquires for the editor. Scissors replies, "Not in, do you hear." The narrator, desperate and reckless, calls him a liar and, with a cheek that fairly amazes himself, claims he must have a word with the editor on a necessary errand—communications from the Stiftsgaarden. Scissors asks, "Well, can't you tell me what it is, then?" The narrator looks him up and down, and this has the desired effect: Scissors accompanies him at once and opens the door. It is the only moment in the novel where the narrator gains the upper hand over this minor functionary, and it is achieved through a lie.

Significance

Scissors never acts with malice; his indifference is the indifference of routine. He is the human face of a system that has no room for the narrator's feverish, irregular talent. His refusal to look up, his curt answers, his absorption in the trivial work of scanning provincial papers—all of it signals that the narrator has become a nuisance, a voice recognized and dismissed. Scissors is not a character in any developed sense; he is a function, a pair of hands that sorts and discards, and his nickname captures that perfectly. He represents the institutional inertia that the narrator must overcome again and again, and his presence in the novel underscores the loneliness of the writer who has no standing, no address, and no claim on the attention of those who control the means of publication.