Bartelby, the Scrivener

The story is a humorous commentary on industrial society. The author, Herman Melville uses the habits of the characters in the story to illustrate themes. The story is a particularly commentary on the modern office atmosphere and how it effected by the differ employees. Melville The author try to make a statement by this story about the relationship between employee and employer, and how the industrial mechanical work, the routinely work made those relationships stressed …

…through the tone of the story that the author believes the narrator had a larger duty to aid Bartleby than he exhibited. The tragic nature of the story's end, where the narrator comes back to visit Bartleby a mere 20 minutes after he has passed on, brings closure to Melville's point that our individual responsibility to our fellow man cannot be taken lightly or just occasionally on a whim when it might seem convenient. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ **Bibliography**