Blog Post #1: topic 2

In order to take a stance on the controversial statement, “Bartleby’s behavior is a reasonable response to his circumstances”, we must take into consideration some background information about Melville’s short story, “Bartleby the Scrivener”. This piece was published in 1853 and the setting is on Wall Street. What was Wall Street like in the mid-1800s? Its economy was bombing due to the upcoming Civil War and the businessmen who worked there were working hard for their share of the flourishing economy. During this time, work was everything; it consumed people’s entire lives.

With this information in mind, perhaps Melville wrote this short story to speak on the character of people who worked on Wall Street during this time period. I believe he used Bartleby’s character to represent how someone in his condition could have (and maybe should have) reacted to their circumstances. Although, Bartleby’s behavior was a little frustrating to both the other characters in the book and us as readers, I sympathize with the situation he was in and feel like his behavior was reasonable.

Bartleby is in an environment where everyone is so concentrated on working, initially, even including him. There was an obligation to work hard in to order to succeed and profit. Melville might have been trying to make a point with Bartleby in showing how people tend to lose sight of what is important outside of work, like spending time with friends and family. Bartleby is the perfect example of this given that “he never went to dinner; indeed that he never went any where” (9). Bartleby was so concentrated on his work; he did it almost mechanically and without complaint.

To the narrator’s surprise, Bartleby began to decline the work given to him by his boss, coining his catch phrase “I would prefer not to”. I see this as a point of liberation for Bartleby. He began to step out of his predictable, routine way of always doing his job without question. While everyone else in the office, and on Wall Street, continued to do work they would probably “prefer not to”, Bartleby simply put into words. Who in their right mind would actually want to spend hours a day copying law documents and reading them over again to check for errors?

Even the narrator admitted, “there was something about Bartleby that not only strangely disarmed me, but in a wonderful manner touched and disconcerted me” (8). It is possible that the narrator might have understood Bartleby and where he his response was coming from. I think it was in the way Bartleby says, “I would prefer not to”, instead of simply declining that makes him so intriguing. A preference infers that there is still another option, the option where Bartleby’s boss would make him do the work or fire him. Since he shares this as a preference, his boss cannot be so angry because Bartleby’s statement is one that his boss might even agree with. Very few people would “prefer” to be working, especially doing a job so tedious, so Bartleby’s behavior is understandable and reasonable.

Taking the setting from this short story and comparing it to today, some of the same issues are still prevalent. People feel the need to work hard, even if it means doing a task you do not want to do. Bartleby was ahead of his time in stating that copying and re-reading law documents is not something he would “prefer” to do, a completely sensible stance. Now, there is not as much pressure to find any good-paying job, but instead, many venture out to find something they would “prefer” to do. There is nothing wrong with stating preferences.