The Excitement of Melville's Real Life in Bartleby?

After our class today where we briefly discussed Melville's life and then Bartleby, The Scrivener I started to consider why Melville would write a story like this and what purpose it could serve. We began to discuss this in the end of class, but not until after class did I realize that the story completely contradicts the facts of Melville's life. Melville was adventurous and wasn't even schooled past the age of 12, which means he didn't necessarily fall under the jurisdiction of any institutional ruling. He struggled with social status and wealth, and worked on whaling and fishing ships throughout his life. The adventure in Melville's life brought me to question why he would care to write a mysterious story about the very average and monotonous life of a lawyer and his scrivener. 

Bartleby is strange, for sure, but nothing about Bartleby, or the narrator's life for that matter, is very exciting. According to Onno today, Melville had at one point lived on a desert island where a fear of cannibalism was a better option than spending time with the captain of his ship, and he chose to write about two men working in an office on Wall Street?! It puzzled me for a while as to why he would choose this as a subject matter, and why Bartleby could have any connection to Melville's life and/or experiences. I'm not saying that an author has to write about their experiences necessarily, but Onno said today that Melville wasn't even really a believer in college, so how could he fixate in such detail on a strict work environment for such average working men in New York City? 

This brought me to the concept that maybe Bartleby is a symbol of adventure and takes action to be adventurous with his famous line, "I'd prefer not" (1499). It's possible that Bartleby's rebellion represents that which Melville could be promoting which is to rebel against this sense of entrapment in an establishment like this law firm on Wall Street. It may seem like a stretch, but The fact that Bartleby stands out as worthy having a story written about him speaks to how otherwise boring the narrator's life must be when it comes to his job. Essentially, my point is, maybe the story's point isn't necessarily to question humanity or the to discuss free will, but maybe it's about exploring excitement and adventure even in the smallest ways possible in your own life. I realize that Melville wrote other stories that were inspired by his life experiences and adventures, and I don't know his specific relationship with offices on Wall Street, but the setting is without a doubt quite average. It's possible that Melville set this story in such an average and unexciting place in order to portray the ways in which one can find adventure (possibly tied in with free will) even in the dullest setting. This also isn't to say there wasn't something confusing and strange about Bartleby, but I just mean to explore why Melville decided to write about such a simple setting if his life experience could have added much more action to this story.