Refusal in Melville’s Bartleby, the Scrivener

The apparently funny plugger of Her objet dart Melvilles nearsighted story, Bartleby, the Scrivener, is a man whose attitude becomes marked by general refusal in the end. After being a diligent penman for the lawyer who narrates the story, Bartleby becomes increasingly recluse and resistant, until his speech is almost reduced to a single phrase I would prefer not to. His refusal to perform at his job, to leave the office and finally to eat, seems, at first, extravagant and gratuitous. However, as it shall be seen, Bartleby embodies the idea of passive resistance against oppression.The lawyer, who is here the narrator of the story as well, represents the pragmatic and materialistic tone. Wall Street, which is the most famous street associated with the business macrocosm, becomes here a symbol of pragmatism. Significantly, the office where Bartleby is employed is enclosed in spite of appearance walls that obstruct the post at the window. Bartleby, who stares at the great wall incessantly, is the escapist whose metaphysical revolt crashes against the pragmatic world of business he is a part of. The story is told by a lawyer, who is obviously puzzled by Bartlebys unaccountable behavior.Because he does not know how to react to Bartlebys refusals, the lawyer attempts to play a charitable role and let him balk on the premises, without asking him to work any more than. He gives up on his eccentric scrivener however, when he sees that his business has to suffer because of Bartlebys presence. As galore(postnominal) other of Melvilles characters, the copyist is a Transcendentalist, who tries to see life beyond the superficial. He refuses the lawyers commands and offers because he believes that business makes man run through his own perception of a deeper reality.Bartlebys thesis is that human exertion is useless, and he wraps his thesis in the form of negative preferences, boastful to agnise that he couldnt act otherwise precisely because it is not a simpl e matter of will. He seems absolutely paralyzed in inaction, gradually renouncing almost all occupation. As an explanation to the characters odd behavior, the narrator recalls that Bartlebys former employment had put him in shake of the assassinated letters or the letters that have reached a dead man at their destination.The former employment obviously added to Bartlebys imprint in the vanity or uselessness of human action in the form of business or commercial employment. Bartlebys inaction all the way contrasts with the agitated world of business Sometimes an attorney having business with me, and calling at my office, and finding no one and the scrivener there, would guarantee to obtain some sort of precise information from him touching my whereabouts but without heeding his idle talk, Bartleby would remain standing immovable in the middle of the elbow room (Melville 38).His clash with this pragmatic world is significant he refuses to be complex in the superficial employ ments of those who do not nurture their own spirits and choose to live artificially. Melvilles association with Transcendentalism is acknowledged. Bartlebys view on life can be therefore explained with the use of the Transcendentalists philosophy. Thus, in Life without Principle, Thoreau remarks that the one element that is completely opposed to poetry and life itself is business I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay to life itself, than this incessant business(Thoreau 1).Thoreau continues his idea by giving example of men who were involved in businesses that are immoral, such as the gold rush to California. According to Thoreau, a business which implies that one man will take advantage of another, without actually performing something useful, is offensive to organized religion and to the divinity It makes God be a moneyed gentleman who scatters a handful of pennies in order to see mankind scramble for them (Thoreau 1). In the same way, in his lecture Man the Reformer, Emerson criticizes the practice of business and commerce, when these cash in ones chips mans primary needs.According to Emerson, to the extent that it is possible, man should depend on his own powers for at least a part of the manual labor, in order to have a direct relation to the world barely the doctrine of the Farm is merely this, that every man ought to stand in primary relations with the work of the world, ought to do it himself, and not to suffer the fortuity of his having a purse in his pocket, or his having been bred to some dishonorable and injurious craft, to sever him from those duties (Emerson 1).Thoreaus and Emersons ideas about business are illustrated by Bartlebys attitude towards his employers profession and the world of Wall Street. Bartleby is exquisite to the fact that such an employment keeps men from enjoying life for its real value. His peculiar behavior and his absolute refusal of the lawyers proposals show that he h olds a different view of life, than that of the common people.Bartlebys contemplative nature is a further hint that he is immersed in thoughts and meditations and refuses to take part in the shallow activities of the men who surround him. The main character is Melvilles short story is therefore a social misfit, who refuses to acknowledge the superficial world of business that the modern man has walled himself in. With the Transcendentalists, Bartleby is focused on contemplation and savvy of the deeper reality, refusing to become involved in a world of petty and purely materialistic concerns.? Works Cited Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Man the Reformer. The Transcendentalist, 2001. Ed. J. Johnson Lewis. Retrieved at July 30, 2009. http//www. emersoncentral. com/manreform. htm. Melville, Hermann. The Complete Shorter Fiction. London Everymans Library, 1997. Thoreau, Henry David. Life without principle. The Transcendentalist, 2001. Ed. J. Johnson Lewis. Retrieved at July 30, 2009. http//www . transcendentalists. com/life_without_principle. htm.