Bartleby and Benito Cereno

Bartleby is a haunting moral allegory set in the business world of 19th-century New York, while Benito Cereno is a harrowing tale of slavery and revolt aboard a Spanish ship, regarded by many as Melville's finest short story. While the tales of Bartleby and Benito Cereno are very different, they share something in common besides being masterpieces of storytelling: both are deep and acute penetrations into the human psyche.