Mordechai Anielewicz once said: “The hardest struggle of all is the one within ourselves. Let us not get used to and adjust to these conditions. He who adapts ceases to distinguish between good and evil: he becomes a slave of body and soul. In the short story “Bartleby the Scrivener,” Herman Melville explores the notion of this internal human struggle through Bartleby and his elusive interactions, or lack thereof, with other characters in a corporate context. Through his use of explicit details and descriptive rhetoric, Melville reveals a reflection of the working class and depicts an extremely negative perspective of the role of commerce in society. More specifically, Melville depicts cultural messages of mechanization, dehumanization, and repetition of employment in industrial America, ultimately suggesting a dichotomy between the upper hierarchy of commerce and those of the working class subjected to the long, arduous labor of copy machines. human. The resulting human tragedy stems from Bartleby's inability or refusal to express the reasons for his rebellion, which ultimately leads to his estrangement from society. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why violent video games should not be banned”? Get an original essay In a capitalist society where a man does his job, earns his salary, and continues the process until he dies (or retires) , Bartleby is an outcast. Bartleby announces that he "would rather not" follow his employer's orders or even be "a little reasonable," and the lawyer never really considers Bartleby's stubborn refusal to be a hardworking member of society. Throughout the story, Bartleby simply exists; he writes, but he even ends up giving it up and prefers to look at the wall. Bartleby is a man who rejects not only work, but also food, money, conversation and everything that creates relationships between people. As Bartleby's passivity grows, he deliberately refuses to make himself known to the community around him. The narrator becomes increasingly frustrated, as Bartleby's utterance of this phrase challenges him repeatedly, and he eventually reconsiders his role and "begins to falter in his own." purest faith” (7), doubting the rules on which his own society, as he perceives it, is at fault. Already it is clear that the interests of the individual, Bartleby, are not satisfied by those of society, or in the other. in this case, the law firm where he works. Much of Bartleby's indifference toward his work and his life itself—and, subsequently, his isolation—seems to stem from the repetitive and impersonal nature of his employment. Throughout the story, Bartleby is portrayed as isolated, mysterious and even surreal, further developing the image of an "invisible man". The screen that the Lawyer places around Bartleby's desk to "isolate Bartleby from [his] sight, without, however, distancing him from [his] voice" (5), so that "private life and society are joined » (5) symbolizes the Lawyer's compartmentalization of the unconscious forces that Bartleby represents. Bartleby is also described as being different and alone, but not in the sense of being alone, to emphasize the fact that he is exercising his own free will. Likewise, he is not associated with anyone and is therefore not subject to undesirable influences; instead, he relies on his own instincts to make his own decisions. In this way, Melville explores the dehumanization of the working class within commerce, depicting patterns of worker homogenization and nonconformity. The expression "I would prefer not to" is a discreet way ofrefusing to conform: Bartleby demonstrates the power of the individual to resist societal pressure to conform. By uttering the words “I would prefer not to,” he effectively goes on strike without ever claiming that he did so. The activity for which he is employed to exercise, writing, is intellectual, stimulating and original; however, it is soon reduced to a seemingly mechanical reproduction, ruinous to the minds and bodies of the workers. There is great irony in the fact that Bartleby and his colleagues are hired to copy newspapers, while his Wall Street colleagues do not copy his behavior. As such, his actions are ultimately futile in that they bring no change, reflecting an important cultural message of the story. Bartleby is the epitome of a “victim” of commerce in society: the mechanical and mindless nature of his work has stripped him of his wealth. of his soul and even his identity. From the start, the Lawyer admits his inability to understand Bartleby, whom he designates as "one of those beings about whom nothing is verifiable" (1) and for whom "there is no material for a complete and satisfactory biography » (1). . The narrator, limited by his profession and the legal logic of his imagination, proves incapable of understanding the mysterious Bartleby. It seems that no interpretation of Bartleby offered by The Lawyer can ever be complete, for the scrivener is a phenomenon entirely foreign to the experience and sensibilities of the narrator. In fact, the lawyer's inability to understand Bartleby's resistance and his refusal to accommodate him reveals a sense of mystery and isolation surrounding Bartleby's composure. In a passage that foreshadows his inability to understand Bartleby, the lawyer describes his other employees as mere caricatures. Quite simply, the Lawyer finds himself unable to observe his workers in more depth. However, Turkey and Nippers, the two editors, both demonstrated their usefulness to him despite their particularities. He refers to Turkey as a "very valuable person to me" (2) and to Nippers as "a very useful man to me" (3). Even Ginger Nut, the office boy, is useful in that "her duty as a supplier of cakes and apples" (4) appeases Turkey and Nippers and thus keeps them working. In other words, the Lawyer considers his employees valuable to the extent that he can exploit them and make money from their work, an agenda that prevails in the world of work where bosses maintain a relationship quite professional and transactional with their employees. the employees reflect Bartleby's lack of conscience. In fact, when he refuses to do his part of the copying, their reactions are immediately hostile. Turkey actually supports the lawyer, while Nippers angrily says, "I think I should kick him out of his office" (7), and Ginger Nut adds, "I think, sir, he's a little crazy » (7). Later, Turkey goes so far as to physically threaten Bartleby when he says, "I think I'll just get behind his screen and blacken his eyes!" (8). Clearly, Turkey, Nippers, and Ginger Nut are even less aware of their slave conditions than Bartleby. These tensions between the editors reveal that they are part of the machinery of modern industry and commerce; they are educated men doing tedious and mindless work. “Part of the machinery” seems to be an apt description of their work: later, photocopiers essentially replace their importance in the office. At first, Bartleby does an "extraordinary amount of writing, as if he had long been hungry for something to copy" (5). This action represents both a thirst for life and a desperate attempt to lull one's sensitivity into asuch a sterile environment. As the lawyer himself admits, examining the copies constitutes “a very boring, tedious and lethargic affair” (5). Yet Bartleby works “silently, palely, mechanically” (5) until the day he “prefers no longer” to reread the copies. Confused, the Lawyer said: "If there had been the slightest uneasiness, anger, impatience or impertinence in his manner [...] I should have violently removed him from the premises" (6). In other words , if Bartleby had presented a serious threat of disobedience to disrupt the class structure of the office, the lawyer would have gotten rid of him. But Bartleby is not a threat, and the Lawyer says he would just as soon throw his "bust in." plaster of Cicero” (6) that Bartleby Through his comparison, the Lawyer reduces Bartleby to the status of an object, a commodity, further revealing the conflicts between boss and worker, or between individual and company. The Lawyer will repeat in each of his confrontations with Bartleby, describing a transactional relationship between them, in retrospect, the Lawyer reacts to Bartleby's refusals with indecision, then backs down or retreats from the challenge, and finally rationalizes his behavior. pattern during his second confrontation with Bartleby, this time pushing his rationalization a little further. In justifying his decision, he convinces himself that he can "cheaply buy delicious self-approval" (8) by befriending Bartleby and not letting him be expelled into a society he knows will is not kind to vagabonds. “Befriending Bartleby; accommodating him in his strange obstinacy will cost me nothing or little” (8), he said. The key word here is “cost”: everything becomes a question of profit and loss. The Lawyer measures his sense of morality, as well as his conscience, by the cost of a major cultural message describing the role of commerce and its materialistic impact on people. Consequently, Bartleby represents only a commodity. at the lawyer's office. But he prefers not to be one, which makes him the “most desperate of humanity” (13). The Lawyer describes him as a “thin and penniless being” (9), who spends all his days copying for “four cents a folio”. (one hundred words)" (9). He cannot escape the workplace; in fact, the lawyer eventually discovers that he is living in the office, among the emptiness of Wall Street. As the lawyer says, “what miserable absence of friendship and solitude are here revealed! His poverty is great; but his solitude, what horror! Think about it. On Sunday, Wall Street is deserted like Petra; and every night of every day is a void” (11). The fact that Bartleby has no backstory, as we learn early in the story and in later dialogue, suggests that he came out of the lawyer's mind. leaves the lawyer's office and practically no longer survives. After refusing to work any longer, he becomes something of a parasite on the lawyer, but the exact nature of his dependence on the lawyer remains mysteriously vague. His persistent refusal to leave despite everything. The incitements and threats imply that he cannot leave, that his role in life is not to leave the law establishment. Like “Marius ruminating among the ruins of Carthage” (11), Bartleby lives among the deserted walls of Wall Street, representing the sterile. nature of commerce in society. With his "Dead Wall Reveries," Bartleby provides a classic example of the tragedy of the alienated man in the context of commerce, although the exact nature of his alienation remains a mystery to the lawyer and therefore to the reader. However, it is likely that his alienation results from the dehumanizing experience of Wall Street, the metaphorical prison of his socio-economic system, which the Lawyer's story reproduces very precisely. In this sense, the.