Bartleby, the Scrivener

A Wall Street lawyer hires a new copyist, Bartleby, silent and at first beyond reproach. Asked one day to do an ordinary task, the clerk answers that he would prefer not to, and repeats it to every later request. Settled in the office, demanding nothing and yielding nothing, he faces his employer with a refusal no authority answers. The story explores office work, urban solitude and the helplessness of kindness before absolute withdrawal. From an office anecdote Melville draws an uneasy fable about the individual's place in the modern city.