Melville never reveals whether Bartleby is a consciously moral figure or a chilling embodiment of the human realities against which Wall Street strives. Melville touched on the theme of greed through the character of Bartleby, who willfully starves himself, to the puzzlement of the lawyers and businessmen around him. Wall Street came to be seen by many as an endeavor in greed, an opinion popularly held to this day. Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street is a short story by the American writer Herman Melville, first serialized anonymously in two parts in the. Morgan, and John Jacob Astor, named in the story as a former client of the narrator. He places an advertisement, and one morning finds on his doorstep. In this story, an elderly Wall Street lawyer, circa 1853, decides to hire an additional scrivener to copy legal documents. At the time of Melville’s writing of “Bartleby” in the mid-19th century, the American economy was rapidly expanding in step with the industrial revolution and the efforts of such tycoons and bankers as J.D. Consider the sad, strange dynamic between what is, in a manner of speaking, a caregiver and a patient in Herman Melville’s Bartleby, the Scrivener. Herman Melville 1819-1891 Widely known as the man who lived among the cannibals, Herman Melville was one of the most famous Dark Romantic writers of the 19 th century. 'Bartleby the Scrivener' (1853) Background. Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-street, should be considered a tragedy, if not in the nature of the story-telling, then in the unfolding of the plot. He draws our attention to this in exclaiming, Ah Bartleby Ah humanity. Wall Street: Melville foregrounds the importance of the story’s setting in its extended title: “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street.” As the epicenter of the American financial market, Manhattan’s Wall Street is a location with political, economic and philosophical significance. Bartleby, as it turns out, if not a product of humanity with all its flaws, is at least an example of it.

Melville scrivener