Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street by Herman Melville
The narrator, a casual business elderly lawyer, helps wealthy men deal with mortgages, deeds, and bonds, telling the story of the strangest man he has ever known Bartleby as a new addition to the narrator officer. The narrator has two staff: Nippers and Turkey. The claws suffer from dyspepsia and Turkey is drunk. But the office survived because in the morning Turkey was sane even though the claws were frustrated, and in the afternoon the claws calmed down even though Turkey was drunk. Bartleby answers questions about the ad, and the narrator hires a naive young man in hopes that his calmness will soothe the moods of other writers.
One day when Bartleby was asked to proofread one of the papers he had copied, he simply replied, "I don't want to," marks the first of many rejections. To the disappointment of the speaker and the frustration of the other employees, Bartleby was involved in fewer and fewer duties in the office. The narrator tries to reason with Bartleby several times and learns about him. But Bartleby always responds the same way when asked to work or to provide information about himself: "I don't want to." On weekends, when a speaker stops in the office, he finds Bartle. B. lives at the office The stillness of Bartleby's life leaves the narrator at night and Sundays as desolate as a deserted city. He alternates between pity and disgust for Bartleby's bizarre behavior.
Bartleby continued to deny his duties until eventually, he was inactive. But the narrator was unable to get him out. The scavenger has bizarre powers over his employer, and the narrator feels he can't do anything to hurt this homeless man. But his business peers become suspicious that Bartleby has turned up at the office as he is not at work, and the threat of a shattered reputation leads the narrator to do something. His attempts to get Bartleby away were in vain. Therefore, the speaker moved the office to a new location. But shortly thereafter, a new tenant of the narrator's old office came to him for help: Bartleby would not leave. When they drove him out of the office, Bartleby haunted the corridors. The narrator meets Bartleby in a final attempt to reason with him. But Bartleby rejected him. Fear of disturbing the anti-Bartleby group, the narrator did not have to work for a few days. When he returned, he learned that Bartleby had been taken to prison.
At the prison, Bartleby appears to be fatter than usual. The friendliness of the speaker was rejected. The narrator offers a one-stop bribe to make sure Bartleby gets well fed. But when the narrator returned a few days later, Bartleby died, he didn't like to eat.
Shortly after, the narrator heard rumors that Bartleby was working in the dead letter office. The narrator reflected that the dead letter would plunge everyone in Bartleby's mood into a darker darkness. The letters represent our death and the failure of our best intentions. Through Bartleby, the narrator sees the world as the miserable writer must have seen it. The closing words of the story are the narrator resigns and sighs in pain: "Ah Bartlebia, man!"
