Blog Post 1 Topic 2

I believe that Bartleby’s behavior is a reasonable response to his circumstances.

The issue is not found within Bartleby but rather within the society which he makes residence in. Every society has societal norms, which the general population must conform to or face punishment. However, just because a society says that something is right, doesn't make it so.  This can be exemplified by how moral standards have evolved over time. What was once socially unacceptable could later become completely accepted and embraced. An application of this concept to our modern society could be LGBTQIA rights. People in many states across the United States were once prosecuted for having abnormal gender preferences or identities. In most state’s currently people can’t be prosecuted for these differences. This is because mind sets and ideals about these issues have changed. This is applicable to Bartleby’s situation as society isn’t accepting of him, because he doesn’t conform to the main stream. His brain is wired differently than what his society deems as “normal” behavior for a law-abiding citizen. This just shows that Bartleby may just have been born before society was accepting of people who had different brain activity than the norm.
The fact that Bartleby always says “I would prefer not to” whenever he is asked by his boss to perform a task other than the copying of law documents, shows how Bartleby can’t conform to societal norms. At first Bartleby works in the office very efficiently as his main job is primarily copying documents. In fact, he is so avid at his job, that his boss sees him as his best employee. However, Bartleby is never able to do much more than copy documents and his response to any other request is “I would prefer not to”. This shows how society enables and promotes people to be more like machines and without considering people’s feelings, thoughts, or desires. I believe that society’s pressure for humans to conform to these machine efficiency standards was what drove Bartleby to a breaking point. When Bartleby first got his job at the copying office, he did his work very quickly and accurately, no questions asked. His deterioration happened over time as the boss made other demands of Bartleby and he persistently “preferred not to”. After a while Bartleby wasn’t even able to copy law documents, he would just sit at his office desk day and night and whenever the boss asked him to do work, Bartleby simply repeated his coined phrase. Society has driven Bartleby to a point where he can’t even function like a “normal” human being anymore, because he became so used to performing like a machine.

The way that the boss responds to Bartleby’s “antics” after persistently trying to get him to leave the office or do work, is by deciding to relocate his office. The way that the boss handled the situation likely sped up Bartleby’s worsening mental health. With no one to watch out for Bartleby, he likely sustained a lonesome existence and when the new tenants took over the building and Bartleby was still there, they sent him to prison. In my opinion these turns of events sped up Bartleby’s worsening mentality and led him to his ultimate death. Unfortunately, societal norms of Bartleby’s time, likely didn’t understand issues of mental health and therefore anyone who exhibited these signs and became a disturbance to society’s ability to run like clock-work, was ultimately a liability and therefore these people tended to be locked up behind bars. Therefore, Bartleby’s behavioral response to the situations which he was put in, was definitely not by any means “normal” behavior, but rather, understandable behavior for his state of mental health and the time and environment he was in.