Blog #1, Topic #2

Blog #1, Topic #2

After I finish reading the short story, ‘Bartleby, the Scrivener’, by Herman Melville, I didn’t get any pleasure like other stories that I have read before, because the abnormality of most of the characters. The behavior of all scriveners in the office described in the story is so wired that I hope I will never have to interact with this kind of people in my whole life. Some of their behavior don’t benefit themselves but also negatively affect other’s welfare. Especially most plots of Bartleby are describing how he is unwilling to do the extra work that his boss ordered. His responses are not only unreasonable but also harmful to the society.

Like the story, the character, Bartleby is also a unique character. He is the main character in this story besides the narrator, but he has negative attitude towards his work, and there is nothing we should learn from, because if we act like Bartleby in our society right now, we would be kicked out from any company immediately. He is not a talented work, so his employer wouldn’t value him very much since the employer can simply hire others to replace his place, especially in place like Wall Street, where the environment is very competitive. Under this condition, a cleaver employee who desires to get promotion or keep his position, should make himself valuable to the employers. Instead of declining the ordered work in a polite manner with the use of “prefer not”, he should try his best to accomplish those tasks. In the story, the narrator, who is also the employer, is irritated by his time wasted in trying to persuade Bartleby to do his ordered tasks. He is also very angry that Bartleby answers all the questions and orders with the phrase: “I prefer not to”. His unreasonable unwillingness to cooperate in the workplace is harmful to the efficiency of the workplace. Bartleby refuse to help his employer to examine other’s work and even his own work, so the narrator must find other people or himself to do it. Even though he works day and night, in other people’s perspective, Bartleby is choosing the work he wants to do but not helping his colleagues. Moreover, after the employer fires Bartleby and move to the new office, he still shamelessly annoys the later tenants, which lead him to be arrested by the police and to the end of his life.

At the end of the story, the genre of the story allows the author to add additional information of Bartleby as his later research. Here, Bartleby’s unreasonable behaviors are explained by his early life experience. He worked in the Dead Letter Office, which makes him very depressed as he kept burning others’ writing mails. The author indicates that he is sorry because it is the society that causes Bartleby’s unreasonable personality.