If Melville had never written Moby Dick, his place in literature would have been assured by his short fiction. Billy Budd, Sailor is his last work and his masterpiece -- a brilliant study of the tragic clash between social authority and individual freedom, human justice and abstract good. In Bartleby the Scivener, a Wall Street law clerk takes passive resistance to a If Melville had never written Moby Dick, his place in literature would have been assured by his short fiction. Billy Budd, Sailor is his last work and his masterpiece -- a brilliant study of the tragic clash between social authority and individual freedom, human justice and abstract good. In Bartleby the Scivener, a Wall Street law clerk takes passive resistance to a comic -- and tragic -- extreme. Completing the beautiful collection are: Benito Cerino, The Encantatas, The Plaza, and finally, Melville s chilling science fiction parable, The Bell Tower.