Bartleby The Scrivener Response

‘I would prefer not to’, this sentence of polite rejection drives many too madness in Melville’s work Bartleby, the Scrivener (1853). The story can be described as a rather strange comedy and the tale involves the relationship between the main characters: the extraordinary Bartleby and his employer. The reader is riding along this path with the lawyer narrator and his thought process as he deals with his newest employee Bartleby. At first sight, when the lawyer-narrator introduces Bartleby he seems to be a great employee who is according to him best described as “padidly neat, pitably respectable, incurably forlorn’ (Melville 1). He works “silently, palely and mechanically and does everything he is supposed to do. Despite his unusual existence
The story is primarily set on Wall street in New York City. In the late ninetieth century this street was New York’s finance district where the main focus was all about money and economics. When the following passage in the text happened; ‘I sat awhile in perfect silence, rallying my stunned faculties. ‘Immediately it occurred to me that my ears had deceived me, or Bartleby had entirely misunderstood my meaning. I repeated my request in the clearest tone I could assume; but in quite as clear a one came the previous reply, "I would prefer not to" (20). Bartleby’s refusal began. This refusal is the beginning of a liberating politics because.. The refusal is itself empty… lines of flight from authority are complete solitary, and they continuously tread on the verge of suicide. In political term, too, refusal itself of work, authority, and voluntary servitude, leads only to a kind of social suicide. (204) Hardt and Negri state that Bartleby’s gesture is futility in its ultimate, nothing positive comes from his refusal. There for Bartelby’s rebellion is an act of constitution. In contrast to Hardt and Negri, Salvoj Zizek does see Bartleby as an active being. He interpretates the sentence ‘I prefer not to’ as a form of protestation. According to Zizek by refusing to do absolutely anything Bartleby walks away from the
Looking at the title ‘A tale of Wall street’ which is already referring to a location Melville makes it clear that location plays a meaningful part in this story. The story takes place in an what is to described as a dark law office with a hand full of odd men in it. The men don’t seem to interfere with each other that much only when it is necessary. Taken into account that these man work in a dark small office, preforming a most boring task, the copying of law forms, and in order to not completely lose their minds occasionally interact with each other. Bartleby is only separated from the office by a screen, yet still he manages to completely shut himself in – this demonstrates his ability to create his own isolated world. At one end they looked upon the white wall of the interior of a spacious sky-light shaft, penetrating the building from top to bottom. of In fact, he moves into the office, where he does not do much more than stare gloomily out the window.’ "I would prefer not to 'has become a famous statement. Bartleby was written in 1853, but feels - for anyone who has ever done drudgery in an office lit by fluorescent lights - remarkably contemporary. The office was a relatively new phenomenon in the time Melville wrote his story. Meanwhile, the office and the office job so ubiquitous that you could almost forget