Bartleby, the Scrivener quiz
By Herman Melville
"I would prefer not to" - the enigmatic clerk whose passive resistance confounds Wall Street
17 questions · about 18 minutes
Questions and answers
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Question 1. Which literary movement best describes "Bartleby, the Scrivener"?
- Correct answer: Realism
- Romanticism
- Gothic Horror
- Naturalism
- Modernism
Realism is the best fit: Melville grounds the story in a specific, recognizable workplace (a Wall Street law office), focuses on ordinary social conditions, and examines the psychological consequences of labor and isolation with no supernatural elements.
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Question 2. How does the narrator (the lawyer) describe himself at the opening of the story?
- As an ambitious, driven man eager to advance through hard work and ingenuity
- Correct answer: As an elderly, safe, and methodical man who prizes prudence above all else
- As a generous philanthropist devoted to improving the lives of the working poor
- As a young idealist recently arrived in New York with dreams of making his fortune
The lawyer introduces himself as an 'elderly man' who is 'one of those unambitious lawyers who never addresses a jury or in any way draws down public applause.' He prides himself on prudence and avoiding conflict — a self-portrait that reveals his comfortable, complacent worldview.
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Question 3. What is the role of Turkey and Nippers in the law office?
- They are senior partners who supervise the lawyer's legal work and sign documents
- Correct answer: They are scriveners (copyists) whose moods and quirks make them each useful only half the day
- They are office messengers who run errands and deliver documents across the city
- They are rival lawyers who compete with the narrator for prestigious legal cases
Turkey and Nippers are both scriveners — professional copyists — but each is effectively functional for only half the workday. Turkey grows reckless and blotchy after midday; Nippers suffers from morning indigestion that makes him irritable. Together they make (just barely) one reliable worker.
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Question 4. What is Ginger Nut's job in the office?
- He copies legal documents alongside Turkey and Nippers
- Correct answer: He runs errands and fetches food, especially ginger-nut cakes
- He serves as the lawyer's personal secretary and appointment keeper
- He delivers messages to the courthouse across the street
Ginger Nut is a twelve-year-old office boy, whose father sent him to learn the law. His main duty is fetching ginger-nut cakes and apples — a comic name that reflects his actual function.
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Question 5. What is the significance of Bartleby's phrase "I would prefer not to"?
- It is polite professional language used in 19th-century office settings to decline unreasonable requests
- Correct answer: It is a form of passive, absolute refusal that is neither outright defiance nor conventional compliance
- It signals that Bartleby is embarrassed by his poor copying skills and fears being evaluated
- It is a coded legal phrase meaning the task falls outside the terms of his employment contract
"I would prefer not to" is Bartleby's signature refusal — grammatically soft but functionally absolute. It paralyzes the lawyer because it is neither outright defiance (which could be punished) nor compliance. It expresses pure passive resistance and becomes a kind of existential statement that spreads eerily to other characters in the office.
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Question 6. What do the walls surrounding the office symbolize in the story?
- The protective boundaries that keep workers safe from the chaos of street life outside
- Correct answer: The confinement, isolation, and deadening effect of industrial labor on the human spirit
- The legal and professional barriers that prevent the narrator from firing Bartleby outright
- The physical security of Wall Street that makes it a desirable place to do business
Walls appear everywhere in the story: the story is set on Wall Street, Bartleby's window faces a blind brick wall, and the Tombs prison where he dies is walled in. They symbolize the confinement and spiritual deadening that industrial capitalism imposes on workers, mirroring Bartleby's own progressive withdrawal from life.
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Question 7. What does "Scrivener" mean in this story?
- Correct answer: A professional legal copyist who duplicates documents by hand
- A lawyer who specializes in writing wills and legal contracts
- A type of legal clerk who files documents in the courthouse
- An accountant who keeps financial records for a law firm
A scrivener is a professional copyist — someone hired to make handwritten copies of legal documents. Before mechanical reproduction, law offices depended entirely on scriveners like Bartleby, Turkey, and Nippers to duplicate contracts, briefs, and deeds.
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Question 8. What does "Cadaverous" mean in this story?
- Correct answer: Resembling a corpse in pallor, thinness, or lifelessness
- Extremely cautious or careful in professional dealings
- Stubbornly devoted to a single task or routine without variation
- Unusually quick and efficient in completing assigned duties
"Cadaverous" means resembling a cadaver — a corpse. The narrator uses it to describe Bartleby's extreme pallor and gaunt, lifeless appearance, foreshadowing Bartleby's eventual death and suggesting he is already more dead than alive from the beginning of the story.
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Question 9. What does the epilogue's revelation about the Dead Letter Office suggest about Bartleby?
- That Bartleby was secretly a criminal who used the post office to conduct illegal activities
- Correct answer: That working with undelivered letters — messages that never reached anyone — deepened his sense of human futility and hopelessness
- That Bartleby was fired from the post office for refusing orders long before he arrived at the law office
- That the narrator invented the Dead Letter Office story to explain away his own guilt about Bartleby's fate
The narrator learns that Bartleby may have worked at the Dead Letter Office in Washington, where undeliverable letters are destroyed. Handling these failed communications — messages of hope, comfort, and love that never arrived — would reinforce a profound sense of futility. It serves as a poignant explanation for Bartleby's despair, though it remains unverified rumor.
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Question 10. Where does Bartleby die at the end of the story?
- Alone in the law office after the narrator moves away
- Correct answer: In the Tombs, a New York City prison, refusing to eat
- On the street after being evicted from the office building
- In a hospital where the narrator arranges his care
Bartleby is arrested as a vagrant when the new tenants of the building complain about him. He is taken to the Tombs — the Manhattan House of Detention — where he refuses to eat and is found dead, huddled at the base of a wall.
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Question 11. What makes the lawyer an unreliable narrator in this story?
- He deliberately falsifies events to make himself appear more sympathetic to the reader
- He admits from the start that he has very little factual information about Bartleby's life
- Correct answer: His self-serving perspective consistently shields him from recognizing his own moral failures
- He confuses Bartleby with his other employees, making the account factually inaccurate
The narrator's unreliability is subtle but pervasive: he congratulates himself on his Christian charity and patience even as he repeatedly fails Bartleby. He prioritizes his own comfort and reputation over genuine help, but narrates these failures in a self-flattering light. Readers must read between the lines to see his moral evasiveness.
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Question 12. What does Bartleby's progressive refusal of all work suggest about Melville's view of 19th-century capitalism?
- That hard work and perseverance are always eventually rewarded in a fair economic system
- Correct answer: That dehumanizing, repetitive labor strips workers of their humanity and will to live
- That workers who refuse their duties deserve the poverty and punishment they receive
- That the legal profession in particular is uniquely honorable among American careers
Bartleby's withdrawal from work — and ultimately from life itself — reads as Melville's critique of how repetitive, dehumanizing labor under capitalism destroys the human spirit. The scrivener's work offers no meaning, creativity, or connection. Bartleby's refusal becomes a form of protest against a system that treats people as interchangeable copying machines.
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Question 13. What does "Prudence" mean in this story?
- Correct answer: The quality of being careful and cautious in practical matters
- The quality of being bold and decisive in professional dealings
- The quality of being generous and compassionate toward those in need
- The quality of being efficient and speedy in completing assigned tasks
Prudence means careful, cautious wisdom in practical matters. The narrator presents prudence as his highest virtue — he avoids controversy, conflict, and anything that might disturb his comfortable routine. Ironically, his 'prudence' becomes a cover for moral evasion when it prevents him from genuinely helping Bartleby.
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Question 14. Which of these events actually happened in the story?
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Bartleby initially works with great diligence, copying documents silently and without complaint.
Happened
At first Bartleby is an extraordinarily productive copyist — he works 'as if long famishing for something to copy' and labors 'silently, palely, mechanically.' His withdrawal comes only gradually after his early burst of productivity.
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Bartleby agrees to proofread documents but refuses to do any copying work.
Didn't happen
Bartleby refuses both copying and proofreading. His first refusal is to assist with examining a copied document — not copying itself — and the refusals expand from there to cover virtually all tasks.
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The narrator discovers that Bartleby has been living in the office day and night.
Happened
Arriving early one Sunday morning, the narrator finds evidence that Bartleby has been sleeping in the office: a blanket, a blacking box, a basin, and other items reveal he has no other home.
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The narrator fires Bartleby immediately upon discovering he refuses to work.
Didn't happen
The narrator repeatedly delays dismissing Bartleby, paralyzed by a mixture of pity, Christian guilt, and the sheer strangeness of the situation. He tolerates Bartleby's refusals for an extended period before ultimately abandoning the situation entirely by moving his office.
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Turkey and Nippers also begin using the phrase 'I would prefer not to.'
Happened
In a striking and darkly comic episode, the phrase 'prefer' spreads through the office. The narrator himself catches himself using it, as does Nippers. Bartleby's language has infected the entire workplace.
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The narrator moves his office to a new location to escape his responsibility for Bartleby.
Happened
Unable to remove Bartleby, the narrator instead abandons the premises — moving to a new office and leaving Bartleby behind for the new tenants to deal with. This is one of his most significant moral evasions.
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Bartleby eventually accepts the narrator's offer to come live at his house.
Didn't happen
The narrator offers Bartleby several options — come stay at his home, become a clerk elsewhere, travel as a companion — but Bartleby refuses every offer with 'I would prefer not to.' He cannot be helped because he will not be helped.
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Bartleby is arrested and taken to the Tombs after being found wandering the streets.
Didn't happen
Bartleby is arrested, but not for wandering — he is found lingering in the halls of the building that formerly housed the law office after the narrator has moved away. The new tenants complain about him, and he is taken to the Tombs as a vagrant.
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The narrator visits Bartleby in the Tombs before he dies.
Happened
The narrator does visit Bartleby in the Tombs and even pays the grub-man to provide him with food. But Bartleby refuses to eat and remains huddled near the walls, indifferent to any help.
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The story ends with the narrator discovering that Bartleby formerly worked at the Dead Letter Office.
Happened
In the epilogue, the narrator reports a rumor that Bartleby had previously worked at the Dead Letter Office in Washington, D.C., where undeliverable letters were burned — a detail that adds poignant context to his pervasive sense of futility and isolation.
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Question 15. How does the narrator's attitude toward Bartleby evolve over the course of the story?
- From instant dislike and suspicion, to grudging tolerance, to eventual admiration for his principles
- From professional respect and distance, to genuine friendship and personal affection
- Correct answer: From curiosity and sympathy, to frustrated pity, to guilt-ridden abandonment
- From charitable concern throughout, to relief when Bartleby is finally removed from the office
The narrator's emotional journey moves from initial curiosity and sympathy (Bartleby is strange but hardworking), to mounting frustration and pity (Bartleby refuses everything but cannot be dismissed), to moral guilt and finally evasion (moving his office rather than confronting his responsibility). His famous closing lament — 'Ah, Bartleby! Ah, humanity!' — suggests he never fully resolves his guilt.
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Question 16. What is the narrator's profession?
- A Wall Street banker and financier
- Correct answer: An elderly lawyer who handles wealthy clients' legal affairs
- A judge assigned to the New York court system
- A newspaper editor who covers legal and financial news
The narrator is a middle-aged lawyer with a comfortable practice handling bonds, mortgages, and title deeds for wealthy clients. He is deliberately not a dramatic courtroom lawyer — his office work mirrors the dull, repetitive nature of the scriveners' copying.
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Question 17. What does "Pallidly" mean in this story?
- Correct answer: In a pale, wan, or colorless manner suggesting illness or emotional depletion
- In a bold, confident manner suggesting certainty and professional authority
- In a slow, hesitant manner suggesting reluctance to complete a given task
- In a mechanical, routine manner suggesting habitual repetition without thought
'Pallidly' means in a pale or wan manner, suggesting a lack of color, life, or vitality. Melville uses it to describe Bartleby's ghostly, drained appearance — reinforcing the impression that Bartleby is more like a specter than a living man, already fading from existence.
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