Herman Melville

"Call me Ishmael," Moby Dick begins, in one of the most recognizable opening lines in Western literature. The name has come to symbolize orphans, exiles, and social outcasts-- in the opening paragraph of Moby Dick, Ishmael tells the reader that he has turned to the sea out of a feeling of alienat...

Bartleby the Scrivener (1853), by Herman Melville, tells the story of a quiet, hardworking legal copyist who works in an office in the Wall Street area of New York City. One day Bartleby declines the assignment his employer gives him with the inscrutable "I would prefer not." The utterance of thi...