Blog Post#1 Topic#2

Bartleby, The Scrivener was written by Herman Melville. It takes place at a law firm on wall-street. The owner used to have three employees or two and a half employees to be exact, because two of the employees had a strange behavior. One employee will perform normally in the morning like any other scrivener. But things change after twelve o’clock. He became reckless and not suited for work. The other employee is vice versa, normal in the afternoon and weird in the morning. As the business grows, the owner decided he needed one more scrivener. There comes Bartleby, pallidly neat, pitiably respectable, and incurably forlorn as he describe. At the beginning, things are working well. Then, Bartleby start acting weir. First, he didn’t want to work with the owner and other employee. Then, he starts living in the office and refuses to neither work nor leave the office. Later, the owner had to relocate his office. But he still refuses the leave this old office. At the end, he was sent to a prison where he rest in peace.

Reading this story, it is normal for people to say that Bartleby’s behavior is unreasonable; at least that’s what I think. But in the very end of the story it mentioned Bartleby was working in the Dead Letter Office before he becomes a scrivener. Dead Letter Office is a place where all the undeliverable mails end up and being dealt with. At that time, mail or letter was the primary way of communication. Hope, love and happiness are often sent through mail. Working in the Dead Letter Office means you are destroying all of those mails day by day. This might have a serious impact on one’s mental health. This could explain Bartleby’s appearance when the owner first met him. In the end, the owner describe Bartleby as “dead men.” For me, a better word will be “un-dead”. If we look closer to Bartleby, we will see that he like to use the phrase “I prefer not to”. This phrase implies that I don’t want to do it, but if you insist, I will do it. But this is not what Bartleby meant. When the owner asks Bartleby to proofread the document or any other time when the owner ask him question, he answer will always contain “prefer not to”. This reminds me of patients in a mental institution.  They looks emotionless and doing things that they were asked and repeating the next day. This is basically what Bartleby was doing. And if we look at the place he work: a window that is almost blocked by bricks in one side and a large green screen on the other, isn’t this how a cell-block looks like. So is Bartleby’s behavior reasonable response to his circumstances. It dependents on how you defend his circumstances. If you think he is a stubborn and lazy employee, then the answer is no. For me, I think Bartleby was just a mental patient acting “normally” in his cell.