Bartleby El Escribiente

I prefer not to: The opposition of Bartleby

On Wall Street in New York, a story written by Herman Melville is developed. There, a lawyer and four scriveners were involved in some events that make them lose control, but the most affected of that situation is the lawyer. All of this is thanks to Bartleby one of the scriveners that seems to be an excellent employee but later he refuses to do anything his boss asks for and he say simply “I prefer not to”. The Bartleby’s attitude is present in the whole story and his behaviors are excused with that simple phrase.

Those words can be seen as something simple to understand but there are some reasons deeper that make us to comprehend a little bit more Bartleby’s attitude and the reason why he says “I prefer not to”. For that, it is important to take into account the context of the story, the Bartleby’s context and the Lawyer’s context which we can see below.

First of all the story was written in 1853, in this epoch in Wall Street a strong system is present; the scriveners had to work for the administrative necessities of the epoch. The capitalism saw people as machines and showed the very bad conditions in which they had to work and the bad payment they received. That consumerism and the business society did not accept that someone refuses the rules, so they punished people with prison or even the death.

Taking into account that, I think that Bartleby was immerse in that world, he had to live the conditions that the epoch gave him and he refuses to that situation, so he prefers not to do what his boss asked for.

On the other hand, Bartleby was under his boss’s pressure, the long hours of work and his job itself make the exhausting panorama. He saw all the structure of capitalism in his office: The boss is the person that demands work for his employees and he is observing all the time what they are doing. Finally Bartleby's attitude brought threat to the already organized structure in the office so much so that the boss was forced to leave it.

The second aspect to take into account is Bartleby’s context; he is a lonely person that was fired from his job and that was strange because of his behavior.

When he began to work with the lawyer, he seemed to be an excellent employee but later he didn’t want to do anything and I think that it is because he didn’t have a reason for enjoying his life, I mean, he is a scrivener and that implies that he must copy and no more, he can’t express what he thinks or what he lives as a writer does in few words he is a death “author” or person.

Besides that, Bartleby was the only person in the story that was against the society statement,

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