When I read that I would need to select one passage to write about for this blog post I immediately knew which one I would choose. I chose the last line of the story, “Ah Bartleby! Ah humanity!” This simple four word line brings together all the emotion from the story for the final conclusion. As I was reading “Bartleby, The Scrivener A Story of Wall Street” I felt an amazing amount of frustration at the situation Herman Melville found himself in with Bartleby. At reading the conclusion of the story it was like all that emotion was released and it really felt as if the story was resolved.

            Now, to look at the language, there isn’t much to look at but there is much to say. The word “humanity” sums up the whole meaning of the story. Bartleby’s behavior was certain odd and it was his odd behavior that kept me reading but what was more important about the story was how Melville reacted to his behavior. He was kind and submissive to Bartleby at times even though his behavior was far from normal. Melville had patience and compassion, qualities that I’m not sure any man on Wall Street has today. If a man was to behave this way on Wall Street today he would be arrested immediately and no one would care what happened to him. People would just see him as some crazy loon who decided to squat in a Wall Street office (if he could even gain access to such an office). Today we focus too much on material things and very few of us would show the compassion that Melville did to Bartleby. He tried everything he could think of to help him out. He even went so far as to invite Bartleby, the man who would reveal nothing about himself, to live with him in his own home. But nothing he did was going to change the outcome of the situation. In the end there was nothing else that could be done because there was obviously something wrong with Bartleby and in the end he starved himself to death. Ah the humanity!