Abstract

This essay is an interpretation of the famous novel by Herman Melville, Bartleby, the Scrivener. A Story of Wall-Street. My aim is not only to interpret the novel, but to expose and problematize the socio-ontological structure of today’s world, which is capitalism. Reading Melville’s story through the prism of selected philosophical ideas allows us to read its freedom-taking nature in an inspiring, but also disturbing way. Bartleby’s example shows that no political and social action is enough to liberate oneself. Neither protest nor activism, nor ideological opposition, nor boycott. Only something that verges on madness and self-annihilation – reaching out to the metaphysical foundations of the world and our existence in it – can be effective.