Bartleby is a kind of clerk, a copyist,who obstinately refuses to go on doing the sort of writing demanded of him; During the spring of 1851, Melville felt similarly about his work on Moby Dick. Thus, Bartleby can be seen to represent Melville's frustration with his own situation as a writer, and the story itself is about a writer who forsakes conventional modes because of an irresistible preoccupation with the most baffling philosophical questions Bartleby can also be seen to represent Melville's relation to his commercial, democratic society.