The subtitle, "A Story of Wall Street," drives home this point. When Bartleby stops, is he still the scrivener? Can he be? Does he, and do we, acquire identities only through work? Or do people have inherent value whether or not they produce labor? The analogy between Bartleby and all of humankind becomes explicit in Melville's final two sentences: "Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!" The concerned tone of this last line, and of the story, belongs to a narrator who, like his money-driven society, ironically drains Bartleby's life of energy even while mouthing pious personal concern for him.
At the beginning of the story, the title character is a scrivener, or law copyist, the mid-nineteenth-century equivalent of a human photocopying machine. Though this short work is best known simply as "Bartleby," its full title-"Bartleby, The Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street"-is significant. He poses the question: "Why would someone prefer the independence of homelessness to the meager security that society offers the homeless?" By asking and not answering this question, he offers a puzzling story unusually open to interpretation.
In the 1853 story "Bartleby," Herman Melville anticipates the alienation theme so common in the works of contemporary American writers.
BARTLEBY, THE SCRIVENER: A STORY OF WALLSTREET
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