Bartleby, The Scrivener and The Birthmark

I think that both stories had a good meaning behind them but I thought "Bartleby, The Scrivener" took too long to get going.  The author talked about pointless things for the first half it seemed like.  "The Birthmark" got right to the point and did not take so long to get started.  I thought the characters in "Bartleby, the Scrivener" didn't change very much but the characters in "The Birthmark" did.  Bartleby changed a little bit from the beginning but after that he stayed the same the rest of the story.