A Wall Street man employs a very melancholy, peculiar copyist to work in his office, a man called Bartleby who soon refuses to do any work because, in his calm yet defiant words, he'd prefer not to.
An unassuming Wall Street lawyer finds himself beset by a new employee, Bartleby, who refuses to work - in an ongoing act of passive refusal, he simply 'prefers not to.' A quiet, dogged battle of wills ensues in this stop-motion reimagining of a Melville classic.