Tension builds as business associates wonder why Bartleby is always present in the office, yet does not appear to do any work. He is saddened by the thought of the life the young man must lead. When the narrator stops by the office one Sunday morning, he discovers that Bartleby is living there. The narrator makes several attempts to reason with Bartleby or to learn something about him, but never has any success. He instead spends long periods of time staring out one of the office's windows at a brick wall. An office boy nicknamed Ginger Nut completes the staff.Īt first, Bartleby produces a large volume of high-quality work, but one day, when asked to help proofread a document, Bartleby answers with what soon becomes his perpetual response to every request: 'I would prefer not to.' To the dismay of the narrator and the irritation of the other employees, Bartleby begins to perform fewer and fewer tasks and eventually none. He hires the forlorn-looking Bartleby in the hope that his calmness will soothe the other two, each of whom displays an irascible temperament during an opposite half of the day. He already employs two scriveners, Turkey and Nippers, to copy documents by hand, but an increase in business leads him to advertise for a third. The narrator is an unnamed elderly lawyer who works with legal documents and has an office on Wall Street in New York. Numerous critical essays have been published about the story, which scholar Robert Milder describes as 'unquestionably the masterpiece of the short fiction' in the Melville canon. In the story, a Wall Street lawyer hires a new clerk who, after an initial bout of hard work, refuses to make copies or do any other task required of him, refusing with the words 'I would prefer not to.'

' Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street' is a short story by the American writer Herman Melville, first serialized anonymously in two parts in the November and December 1853 issues of Putnam's Magazine and reprinted with minor textual alterations in his The Piazza Tales in 1856. 'Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street'

For other uses, see Bartleby (disambiguation).

Meaning of bartleby the scrivener