Blog Post 1, Topic 2 Bartleby

I think Bartleby’s behavior is a mix of his circumstances and his paranoiac personality. As Melville left much space for imagination, we can imagine how much pain Bartleby had suffered from that gives him a “firm” and “mild” voice to reject the tasks appointed by his new employer. Starting with the old lawyer’s “vague rumor”, we know that Bartleby was abruptly fired by the Dead Letter Office at Washington when he worked to deal with the dead letters going to no one. Depressing and gloomy that job could be, however, Bartleby then got the chance to hug a new stage of life when he got fired in Washington and moved to New York. But he failed to do so.  

Some argues that the working environment of the old lawyer’s office typically reflect the coldness of Wall Street which drives Bartleby to abnormality and isolation. However, one must notice that he didn’t put effort to be “normal”. He chose to stay at the dark corner day and night, “gorged]” himself on documents, and had no personal life other than work. There is nothing unreasonable when an employee refuse to follow the order given by his supervisor in workplace. But as Bartleby did so three times, none of each time did he explained his refusal to anyone. When the old lawyer decided to keep him no more in the office and asked him to leave, he chose to ignore. When everyone moved to the new office, he chose to live a even more pathetic life by living in the old empty room. After he was imprisoned, he chose to stop eating and “asked” for death. Until the end, one can still strongly feel that Bartleby was conscious enough as he behaved. However, speaking of his paranoiac behaviors, I wonder what pushed him on this road at the very beginning.

Unlike to others in the Wall Street, what Bartleby had been dealing with was not cold money and stock, but the very humanity. He might had read thousands of undelivered happiness, longing, love, hope and forgiving, and then burned them into ashes like they never exist. His past certainly left him the trauma as when the old lawyer tried to move him out of the old office, he answered repeatedly, “I’m not particular” and “I would prefer not to make any change.” Who is “particular” then? Why making changes terrifies him so much? Probably Bartleby himself doesn’t have the answer. Seemingly all he wanted is keeping copying the documents, without any other reviewing tasks from the old lawyer. In Darwin’s natural selection theory, Bartleby’s unreasonable behaviors therefore can be seen as an unfit to his natural environment. His paranoiac personality from his past determined his unwillingness to change as he moved to a new city and had a new job.

Truly, Bartleby might acted differently if the old lawyer hadn’t put him at a dark corner, separate his desk with a folding screen, or give him money, ask him to choose in between ask him to go and he leave voluntarily. However, as Bartleby himself said, “I would prefer not to take a clerkship”. It’s not the matter of where to work. It’s the matter of how to live. He just simply doesn’t want to change (places to stay day and night, people to meet, works to do). Therefore, even Bartleby didn’t work in Wall Street, he wouldn’t wanted to change too.