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Bartleby The Scrivener Mental Illness

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In Herman Melville's short story, "Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street," Melville dances on the topic of one’s own social ostracization due to their mental illness in order to display society’s backhanded response through the narrator’s actions towards Bartleby. Bartleby exhibits numerous symptoms that allude to the subject living with depression, these signs include lack of motivation and straying away from new ideas, routines (demonstrated by his refusal, “I would prefer not to”), lack of self care (denying food, “[Bartleby] never eats a dinner”), as well as denying social interactions (“[Bartleby] disappeared behind the screen” and other prisoners referring to him as the “silent man”). Henceforth, these symptoms lead to an assumption
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