Bartleby, The Scrivener

In this mysterious, moving story, Herman Melville depicts the quiet rebellion of an ordinary man against the machinery of modern life. The story begins when a new copyist, named Bartleby, is hired by a lawyer with an office on the famous Wall Street in Manhattan, New York. Bartleby does well at first, but soon his "passive resistance" appears, which is evident in the phrase he repeats whenever he ...