"Bartleby the Scrivener" is now one of the most famous short stories of the nineteenth century by the American

novelist Herman Melville (18191891). Herman Melville was an 18th century American novelist, poet, essayist and short story writer. He is best known for his works Moby Dick and Typee. During his lifetime he was considered a failure, but after his death his worth as a writer was recognized. (Collins, 100) Bartleby firstly appeared anonymously in two parts in the November and December 1853 editions of Putnam's Magazine, and was reprinted with minor textual alterations in his The Piazza Tales in 1856. "Bartleby the Scrivener" is one of Melville's most famous stories. It is also one of the most difficult to interpret. For decades, critics have argued over numerous interpretations of the story. The story is about a man, who refuses to do anything he does not "prefer to", and in the end he refuses to do anything. He worked silently, painfully, mechanically. Slowly he transforms his office into a home. Bartleby is according to the Lawyer, who is Bartlebys boss, one of those beings of whom nothing is ascertainable, except from the original sources, and, in his case, those were very small. After the hard works that Bartleby done he is no longer a ghost there. He is a poor man who found salvation. He wants to be a generous person, but he cant because there is so much pressure on him. The novel starts with the presentation of the Wall Street, the location where money talks. According to Geists book, Wall Street has a long and varied history, full of colourful vignettes and wheeling-dealing. Almost from the moment that the market was organized out-of-doors in the eighteenth century, it has been the symbol of the best and worst finance has had to offer. (Geist, 1). This is the place where Bartleby starts working in a big office building. The narrator before presents the main character talks about two scriveners, Nippers and Turkey, their job is to copy legal documents by hand. Each of them has problems. Turkey is an alcoholic. Dillingham says about him the following: Turkey, the oldest of the scriveners, has aged beyond the stage of unsettling ambition (Dillingham, 47). In the afternoons Nippers calm down and Turkey gets drunk. Nipper is a whiskered fellow of twenty-five, he suffers from chronic indigestion. According to Dillingham the five characters in the lawyers office represent five concentric circles of age. (Dillingham, 46). The narrator stands in the outer circle, as goes back in the time he tells about Turkey, Nippers, and Ginger Nut they represent the smaller and smaller circles. In the short story is a duel between the narrator, who is a middle-aged man lawyer of the Wall Street and Bartleby, one of his employees. The prize of the competition is the soul of Bartleby. Turkey, Nippers and Ginger Nut represent the normal characters. Bartleby appears to be a boon in practice, he works with passion, he throws himself into the middle of the paper work, and he

produces high-quality works, as Dillingham mentioned: He passes his days in the safety of a snug little office which he refers to as a retreat . ( Dillingham, 18). One day the lawyer visits Bartleby and asks him to correct a copied document. Bartlebys answer is: I would prefer not to. The narrator does not give up so easily, he visits several times Bartleby to convince him to assume the work. Bartleby always refuses the lawyer, he only gives his signature: I would prefer not to, but the lawyer after these comes out with a new idea, which is the payoff; he wants to give money to Bartleby. After a time, as days passed (Mellvile, 31). Bartleby started to transform his office into a comfortable home. The lawyer discovers Bartlebys retreat from the world, when he wants to go in to Bartlebys office and he cannot, because there is a key in the lock. Bartleby is no longer a ghost there; he is a poor man who found salvation. Bartlebys loneliness impresses the lawyer, watching he amazement and do not knows what to do with him. For a while Bartleby works normally further, than after a short time his agility start to settle and finally he do nothing, by this astonishing way Melville shows that each individual does have a limit. The lawyer after this can not do anything with Bartleby, he do not want nothing from the life, refuses all the pleasures of it, with this attitude he presents the typical American worker at that period of the American history. The lawyer feels that Bartleby is not the same person, and he want Bartleby to leave, but he is unable to do it, he relocates his entire business leaving Bartleby behind. The lawyer moved elsewhere his business and leaved Bartleby alone, just to get away from Bartleby, which is an impractical way to resolve problems, than new tenants came to him, for help but he refuses the leaving from the Wall Street into elsewhere. Bartleby was fired out from the office; he now sits on the stairs all day and sleeps in the building's front doorway. The narrator visits Bartleby and offers him to go with him into his own house and live there, but Bartleby refuses him again saying: I would prefer no to. Furthermore, deciding Bartleby to stay out from the work in the next few days, he makes angrier the other workers in the building and they want to evict him. The narrator returns to Bartleby finds that he has been forcibly removed and imprisoned at the Tombs and finds out that he does not even put up a fight when the police take him to prison. Bartlebys problem seems to have been resolved, but it is not true, he just has simply been pushed aside, but not resolved. The narrator helps on Bartleby with making his prison cell more comfortable for him and asks the people in there to give Bartleby better foods. In the end Bartleby dies. In a final act Bartleby refuses to eat, and when the narrator visits him again in the prison he finds out that Bartleby died, he starved to death in prison. He cannot live as he "prefers" to, he apparently does not want to live at all.

As a conclusion I think that the story of Bartleby is a very instructive story, showing the importance of attention with the workers who are working all day without any break, they have limits and this should take it account. Concerning Dillinghams words: Bartleby, t he Scrivener is the story of two men, one who will not communicate with the world and one who will not communicate with himself . (Dillingham, 53).