A New York notary is looking for a scrivener for his office. The seemingly harmless and unremarkable Bartleby appears for the position, and from then on, he works silently and mechanically. However, the pale man soon begins to refuse: more and more often, he gently states that he prefers not to perform a task, and all attempts by the notary to bring his strange writer to reason seem doomed to fail. With its absurd humor and pointed language, Herman Melville's "Bartleby" (1853) is considered one of the most significant stories in world literature.