Bartelby

Bartelby The Legend of Bartleby “Nothing so aggravates an earnest person as a passive resistance.” (13) This is so because there is nothing a rational person can do to combat a passive message. Should a group of people decide not to eat until their government complies with their demands, the government will feel the need to comply from a humanitarian stand point. There is nothing else that the government can do to prevent the death of its citizens and that would simply be unacceptable in the global spectrum of sociological science. The problem with passive resistance, however, is its failure to be recognized. Melville’s Bartleby has a purpose rooted deeply in this as its main character attempts to enlighten the working population to the indefinite strife of low level employees. Bartleby the man is opposing the monotony of life in a work place where production equals success. Essentially a talking Xerox machine, the scrivener uses passive means of resistance to make his main and is fellow subordinates understand the faults in their way of life. Melville does this by taking the downfalls of what was then modern day Wall Street and challenge them with title character’s bartleby, office, narrator, simply, resistance, passive, narrator, been, success, something, society, scrivener, melville, means, man, life, however, even, copying, after, working, vocational, understand, should, problem, part, nothing, narrator’s, monotony, message, melville’s, job, government, employee, each, documents, different, created, between, being, york, work, wall, until, took, told, time, text, taking