The Scrivener’
Perhaps the most sophisticated aspect of Melville’s story is in how effectively he lures the reader into focusing on the character of Bartleby. The scrivener’s inscrutability is oddly compelling and invites one to try and “understand” Bartleby, to fashion a diagnosis, even imagine a treatment or cure. But the story is about perspective itself, the perspective of the lawyer, who can only assess and try to make sense of his enigmatic clerk within the confines of his own singular world view. True, his is the ethic of Wall Street and the pragmatic rationalism that defines the class of people ...
