Bartleby, The Scrivener

Bartleby is a kind of clerk, a copyist, "e;who obstinately refuses to go on doing the sort of writing demanded of him."e; During the spring of 1851, Melville felt similarly about his work on Moby Dick. Thus, Bartleby can be seen to represent Melville's frustration with his own situation as a writer, and the story itself is "e;about a writer who forsakes conventional modes because of an irresistible preoccupation with the most baffling philosophical questions."e; Bartleby can also be seen to represent Melville's relation to his commercial, democratic society.