Bartleby I Would Prefer Not Too

Herman Melvilles Bartleby, the Scrivener scrutinizes the impersonal, harsh, and isolating fatigue conditions in America soon later the industrial revolution. Bartleby is presented as a foil to his repressed and ignorant coworkers Turkey, Nippers, and Gingernut who positionicipate, however dysfunctionally , in the brutal system. In contrast, Bartleby distinguishes himself to the narrator and the reader as the strangest scrivener I ever saw or heard of( ) by rejecting the telluric work of copying legal documents and proof reading them.He embodies passive resistance through the repetition of the chemical reaction l would prefer not to when faced with a command from his employer. Through the use of key oral communication such as would and prefer, Melville gives Bartleby the appearance of submitting to his employers, the lawyers, judgment and authority. This display of subordinance, however, is only an illusion. Bartleby rejects the capitalist hierarchy on which Wall Street is built and thus also rejects the lawyers authority. What exactly does Bartleby prefer not to do?He prefers not to comply with the dehumanizing reality of the American capitalist economy. As scriveners, Bartleby and his coworkers live an automaton-like existence, robotically reproducing documents written by others. conflicting Bartleby, however, his coworkers have been indoctrinated into conforming through the never-fully- satisfying reward of wages. As stated by Karl Marx, a German economic 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 effect of capitalism is also demonstrated by Bartlebys foregoing occupation as a subordinate clerk in the Dead Letter Office ( ). This calling consisted ofa pallid hopelessness( ) of continually handling these dead letters and assorting them for the flames( ). Bot h of Bartlebys jobs provide no button 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 doubt the rules upon which his own society is built.