Global English literature: Bartleby

Author

Herman Melville, an American novelist, best known for his works exploring themes of individuality and alienation.

Themes

Depression, mental illness, empathy, wall street

Context

Herman Melville posted it anonymously > suffering from depression

Written greatest commercial failure at that time > Moby Dick (1851)

> he was popular for a few novels but after Moby Dick people dropped him

Wanted to be different other authors

Narrator

Told from the perspective of a lawyer

“a motionless young man one morning, stood upon my office threshold, the door being open, for it was summer. I can see that figure now-- pallidly neat, pitiably respectable, incurably forlorn! It was Bartleby”

“Since he will not quit me, I must quit him. I will change my offices”

"I remembered that he never spoke but to answer; that though at intervals he had consider- able time to himself, yet 1 had never seen him reading---no, not even a newspaper;"

"1 WOULD PREFER NOT TO"

“You are decided, then, not to comply with my request—a request made ac cording to common usage and common sense?”

Again I sat ruminating what I should do. Mortified as I was at hisbehavior, and resolved as I had been to dismiss him when I entered my offices, nevertheless I strangely felt something superstitious knocking at my heart, and forbidding me to carry out my purpose, and denouncing me for a villain if I dared to breathe one bitter word against this forlornest of mankind. 

I sat down and said: “Bartleby, never mind then about revealing your history; but let me entreat you, as a friend, to comply as far as may bewith the usages of this office. Say now you will help to examine papers to-morrow or next day: in short, say now that in a day or two you will begin to be a little reasonable:—say so, Bartleby.”

“prefer”

• Yet I was sorry for him. I speak less than truth when I say that, on his own account, he occasioned me uneasiness. If he would but have named a single relative or friend, I would instantly have written, and urged their taking the poor fellow away to some convenient retreat. But he seemed alone, absolutely alone in the universe.

 Since he will not quit me, I must quit him. I will change my offices; I will move elsewhere; and give him fair notice, that if I find him on my new premises I will then proceed against him as a common trespasser.

 Going upstairs to my old haunt, there was Bartleby silently sitting upon the banister at the landing. “What are you doing here, Bartleby?” said I.

• “Sitting upon the banister,” he mildly replied.