- description
- # Bartleby's Refusal and Discovery of His Living Situation
## Overview
This segment, titled "Bartleby's Refusal and Discovery of His Living Situation," is an excerpt from the short story "[Bartleby, The Scrivener](arke:01KG8AJ8SS2R5YVRHT1BCDZZNP)". It spans lines 631 to 680 of the source text and was extracted from the file "[bartleby_the_scrivener.txt](arke:01KG89J1CRGPEZ66W67EZPAMPE)" as part of the "[Melville Complete Works](arke:01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW)" collection.
## Context
This segment follows the narrator's encounter with Bartleby, who is found in his office on a Sunday morning in a state of dishabille. Bartleby politely refuses entry, asking the narrator to return later. The narrator, though initially rebellious against Bartleby's mild defiance, complies. Upon his return, the narrator finds Bartleby gone and discovers evidence that Bartleby has been living in the office, using minimal furnishings and food.
## Contents
The text details the narrator's surprise and unease at Bartleby's appearance and behavior. It describes the narrator's internal debate about Bartleby's character and activities. The core of the segment is the narrator's discovery of Bartleby's makeshift living arrangements within the office, including a blanket, a tin basin, and remnants of food. This discovery leads the narrator to reflect on Bartleby's profound loneliness and poverty, comparing his solitude to that of Marius amidst the ruins of Carthage.
- description_generated_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:06.124Z
- description_model
- gemini-2.5-flash-lite
- description_title
- Bartleby's Refusal and Discovery of His Living Situation
- end_line
- 680
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:47:37.562Z
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- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 631
- text
- tattered dishabille, saying quietly that he was sorry, but he was
deeply engaged just then, and—preferred not admitting me at present. In
a brief word or two, he moreover added, that perhaps I had better walk
round the block two or three times, and by that time he would probably
have concluded his affairs.
Now, the utterly unsurmised appearance of Bartleby, tenanting my
law-chambers of a Sunday morning, with his cadaverously gentlemanly
_nonchalance_, yet withal firm and self-possessed, had such a strange
effect upon me, that incontinently I slunk away from my own door, and
did as desired. But not without sundry twinges of impotent rebellion
against the mild effrontery of this unaccountable scrivener. Indeed, it
was his wonderful mildness chiefly, which not only disarmed me, but
unmanned me, as it were. For I consider that one, for the time, is a
sort of unmanned when he tranquilly permits his hired clerk to dictate
to him, and order him away from his own premises. Furthermore, I was
full of uneasiness as to what Bartleby could possibly be doing in my
office in his shirt sleeves, and in an otherwise dismantled condition
of a Sunday morning. Was any thing amiss going on? Nay, that was out of
the question. It was not to be thought of for a moment that Bartleby
was an immoral person. But what could he be doing there?—copying? Nay
again, whatever might be his eccentricities, Bartleby was an eminently
decorous person. He would be the last man to sit down to his desk in
any state approaching to nudity. Besides, it was Sunday; and there was
something about Bartleby that forbade the supposition that he would by
any secular occupation violate the proprieties of the day.
Nevertheless, my mind was not pacified; and full of a restless
curiosity, at last I returned to the door. Without hindrance I inserted
my key, opened it, and entered. Bartleby was not to be seen. I looked
round anxiously, peeped behind his screen; but it was very plain that
he was gone. Upon more closely examining the place, I surmised that for
an indefinite period Bartleby must have ate, dressed, and slept in my
office, and that too without plate, mirror, or bed. The cushioned seat
of a rickety old sofa in one corner bore the faint impress of a lean,
reclining form. Rolled away under his desk, I found a blanket; under
the empty grate, a blacking box and brush; on a chair, a tin basin,
with soap and a ragged towel; in a newspaper a few crumbs of
ginger-nuts and a morsel of cheese. Yes, thought I, it is evident
enough that Bartleby has been making his home here, keeping bachelor’s
hall all by himself. Immediately then the thought came sweeping across
me, What miserable friendlessness and loneliness are here revealed! His
poverty is great; but his solitude, how horrible! Think of it. Of a
Sunday, Wall-street is deserted as Petra; and every night of every day
it is an emptiness. This building too, which of week-days hums with
industry and life, at nightfall echoes with sheer vacancy, and all
through Sunday is forlorn. And here Bartleby makes his home; sole
spectator of a solitude which he has seen all populous—a sort of
innocent and transformed Marius brooding among the ruins of Carthage!
- title
- Bartleby's Refusal and Discovery of His Living Situation