![]() ![]() Nothing so aggravates an earnest person as a passive resistance. On Bartleby’s actions, the narrator states, Bartleby never says what his principles are, but his “passive resistance” causes problems with the narrator, a man who continually threatens to reprimand Bartleby and the other employees but never does. Truthfully, we never really know for sure what drives Bartleby to continue to tell his employer, “I would prefer not to.” However, I would argue, as some have done, that we should read Melville’s story, as we do Rebecca Harding Davis’s Life in the Iron Mills, as a commentary on transcendentalism and specifically on Henry David Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience.Įmerson and Thoreau argue that resistance to authority should be carried out based on one’s own principles, and Bartleby appears to base his continuous refusal to do his job because of his principles. When I asked students what they thought of Herman Melville’s Bartleby, the Scrivener, most expressed frustration with Bartleby because they did not know his motivations. ![]()
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