Bartleby, the Scrivener
On Wall Street, a mild-mannered lawyer hires a quiet copyist named Bartleby, who one day begins responding to every request with the same haunting phrase—’I would prefer not to’—and slowly withdraws from all activity, baffling and disturbing everyone around him. Melville’s enigmatic masterpiece is a profound and unsettling parable of alienation, passive resistance, and the isolation of modern life. Spare, funny, and deeply melancholy, Bartleby, the Scrivener has fascinated readers and critics for generations with its refusal of easy meaning. One of the greatest short stories in American literature, it is a quietly devastating study of a soul that simply stops participating in the world.
About the Author
Herman Melville (1819–1891) was an American writer who drew heavily from his own experiences as a merchant sailor and whaler in the Pacific. He produced novels, short stories, and poetry that examined moral complexity and the sea, though he remained relatively obscure during his lifetime…
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