Bartleby I Would Prefer Not Too

Herman Melvilles Bartleby, the Scrivener scrutinizes the impersonal, harsh, and isolating labor conditions in America soon after the industrial revolution. Bartleby is presented as a cover to his repressed and ignorant coworkers Tur give away, Nippers, and Gingernut who goicipate, however dysfunctionally , in the brutal system. In contrast, Bartleby distinguishes himself to the bank clerk and the reader as the strangest scrivener I ever saw or hear of( ) by rejecting the mundane work of copying legal documents and proof schooling them.He embodies passive resistance through the repetition of the response l would opt not to when faced with a command from his employer. Through the use of key words such as would and prefer, Melville gives Bartleby the appearance of submitting to his employers, the lawyers, judgment and authority. This queer of subordinance, however, is only an illusion. Bartleby rejects the capitalist hierarchy on which Wall Street is build and thus besides rejec ts the lawyers authority. What exactly does Bartleby prefer not to do?He prefers not to comply with the dehumanizing reality of the American capitalist sparing. As scriveners, Bartleby and his coworkers personify an automaton-like existence, robotically reproducing documents written by others. Unlike Bartleby, however, his coworkers have been indoctrinated into conforming through the never-fully- square(a) reward of wages. As stated by Karl Marx, a German frugal revolutionary, Capital is dead labor, which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labor, and lives he more, the more labor it sucks. (Marx) By preferring not to , Bartleby protests against alienating, mundane labor. The life- sucking payoff of capitalism is also demonstrated by Bartlebys previous occupation as a subordinate clerk in the Dead Letter part ( ). This Job consisted ofa pallid hopelessness( ) of continually handling these dead earn and assorting them for the flames( ). Both of Bartlebys jobs provide n o outlet for communication, individuality, creativity or growth.The apitalistic economy has stripped him of his humanity, and he would prefer not to continue taking part in it. By using the phrase, l would prefer not to, Bartlebys also causes the lawyer to stagger in his own plainest faith (1 1 and to motion the rules upon which his own society is built.