Bartleby, the Scivener

The character Bartelby from Herman Melville's short story "Bartleby, the Scrivener" parallels many men who work on Wall Street. A strange fellow, Bartleby does not attempt to connect socially with other people even his collegues in the law firm. They know nothing about him outside of the firm. They do not know if Bartleby has a family or anything of the sort. Furthermore, he does not leave the office at all while refusing any work that he prefers not to do. Although he avoids normalcy, he is similar to the lawyer and narrator of the story. The narrator says that he feels sympathy for him because "both I and Bartleby were sons of Adam (657).", yet they had more in common than he would want to admit. The narrator exemplified many of Bartleby's qualities: passive, unwilling to leave the workplace, and the lack of familial bonds. Presently, Bartleby's state is more drastic because he is like a body without a soul. He is a drastic example of Wall Street's businessmen, who live to work and prefer not to live a life outside the workplace.