SOURCE: " 'Bartleby the Scrivener': Language as Wall," in College Literature, Vol. II, No. 1, Winter 1975, pp. 17-27.

Pinsker is an American scholar and poet, and the author of several books on contemporary American literature. He has a particular interest in American humor and is known for his own witty critical style. In the following essay, he interprets "Bartleby, the Scrivener" as a statement on the inability of language to fully circumscribe human experience.

Melville's puzzling story "Bartleby the Scrivener" threatens to make scriveners of us all, endlessly writing those dead letters called literary criticism. Scholars with a biographical bent have pointed out the parallels between the disaffected Bartleby and his equally disaffected author. Both were professional scriveners; both "preferred" to withdraw. For others, the story is a study in the application of passive resistance, one a Gandhi might have read for aid and comfort. More recently attention has shifted...