The short story "Bartleby The Scrivener" is an almost surrealistic story about a man who refuses to do anything he does not "prefer to", and endly he refuses to do anything.

The plot is actually a duel between the storyteller, a middle-aged lawyer of the Wall Street and Bartleby, one of his employees. The prize of the competition is the soul of Bartleby. The other characters - Turkey, Nippers and Gingernut - represent the "normal people" as well as they are living proofs for the tolerance and humanity of the storyteller, or Melville himself, that is.

The duel means that the lawyer is fighting against the self-destroying stubbornness of Bartleby on the ground of moral values such as the above mentioned humanity, the responsibility and sympathy towards our fellow-men

also Christian values in general, while Bartleby is defending his individuality and personal integrity to the extreme with the instruments of passive resistance, well before Gandhi proved us, that no one can defeat passive resistance - in this way, this short story preceded its age with a long time. In fact, it has to be said, it is not sure, whether Bartleby realized that someone wants to save him, or he wanted to be saved at all. I do not think he felt himself to be lost or endangered by anything at all.

On the side of the society there is a man, who is not an average person with exceptional sensibility for human problems, as well as preferring inner peace to success for any price. In a short way, he is one of the better members of the society. On the other hand, there is Bartleby: a strange, lonely figure, a quiet outcast. He speaks only when he is asked, althought he is not an obedient character by any means. If he does not want to do something he is called to, he simply says: "I prefer not to". He always protests in a quiet, polite but resolute way.

The character of Bartleby is almost frightening to someone who is used to solve problems intelligently. Reading the story, I always had to ask myself: what could I do with someone like Bartleby? First, he is very obscure, as we know almost nothing about him. He has no weak points - in fact, he is a single weak point. Second, he is very consistent in his irrational stubbornness - this suggests an immense willpower, an amazing mental determination. It seems that Bartleby is systematically going towards the decline, to reach a goal only he knows: for us only death is visible from that.

He is like a robot who received the order to disassemble himself gradually.

This idea can also be proved with the fact, that Bartleby does not seem to be thinking: when Melville's lawyer asks him what he would "prefer", he cannot answer. He only tells about what he does not prefer.

Why is he doing that? There are more explanations for that question. We can think that he is actually a mighty character - a revolutionary, terrific hero of selfishness, who is following only his own principles, a kind of mental kamikaze. If we do not "prefer" sublime explanations, we can suppose him to be a victim of a mental distortion - in fact, his behaviour resembles to that of autism, which means he has problems communicating with the world out there. We can also think he is getting rid of his instincts in order to reach a kind of Nirvana - first, he loses the longing to fit to the society, than he loses his self-defense instinct, as he lets the things just happen around him and finally he loses his desire to live. He does not seem to have fear from anything. Sure, it can be caused by his narrow-mindedness or by his lack of emotions - he does not insist on anything or anyone except that he "does not prefer to". It can also be possible, that he is a kind of a refined rascal, who abuses the good intents of his employer for some obscure aims.

He is only frightening because we do not know anything about him.

Anyway, we know much more about the lawyer - we do not know much about him, but we know him personally. We know, that his relationship towards the society is based upon his knowledge of mankind, his deep sympathy towards his fellow-men and his self-esteem. He is the opposite of Bartleby: he observes the world around him with sensibility, and a large proportion of his thinking is about his fellow-men - his employees, his clients, and Bartleby. The first-person storytelling makes us possible to fit into the situation of the lawyer, this way we can learn his straightforward thinking about the world. To me, it seems quite obvious that Melville wishes us to identify with the lawyer, a honest, good person - Melville does. The lawyer becomes almost obsessed by the idea to find the key to the soul of Bartleby. He wants to help him, despite that his common sense suggests him to take his hands off the whole issue. The lawyer, as a man of good intents, and a holder of protestant values and moderate success, cannot imagine the thinking of Bartleby, although he constantly tries to understand him. Unlike Bartleby, he has something to insist on.

It is hard to find the moral of the story. Perhaps it is that you cannot help someone who does not want to be helped, or, putting this idea in an other way, that passive resistance cannot be broken.

On the side of society there is humanity, sensibility and sociability: these values are represented by the storyteller. On the other side there is the complete freedom of the individual, also Bartleby. Does he have the right to refuse all kinds of responsibility towards society? Does he have the right to pull himself out of any rules? In the legal sense of the word, he certainly has. In the natural sense of the world, he has not. Humans are social creatures, and in a human society total freedom means total loneliness and defencelessness. The idea of total freedom, the anarchy of the individual, contradicts human nature: the basic instincts of all living creatures. When Bartleby gave up these instincts he died, and that without any insults from outside; he died in an environment which was not even hostile against him.

Why could not the storyteller save his life? First, it would have been a very hard task. Second, Bartleby did not feel like someone to be saved. It is not like he wanted to die: it has just happened, as a necessity. He violated the rules of nature, and he had to fail. The lawyer was trapped by his own ideals. He could only save him by means of violence (in fact, it is not sure at all, it is merely the only way to do that), but his humanity does not allow him to act this way. His biggest problem is actually that he does not know anything about Bartleby. He does not know how could he catch his attention for anything at all.

This way, the lawyer failed in doing a social task. Bartleby also failed in doing the ultimate natural task: live and survive. Melville feels, that he cannot leave the reader without any explanation, but in my opinion it is not very important. His storytelling, his ideas, his humanity make this short story a masterpiece on its own.