Mordechai Anielewicz once stated: “The most difficult struggle of all is the one within ourselves. Let's not get used to and adapt to these conditions. Whoever adapts ceases to discriminate between good and evil: he becomes a slave in body and soul." In the short story "Bartleby the Scrivener", Herman Melville explores the concept of this internal human struggle through Bartleby and his elusive interactions, or lack thereof, with other characters in a corporate setting. Through the use of explicit details and descriptive rhetoric, Melville reveals a reflection of the working class and portrays an extremely negative perspective of the role of commerce in society. More specifically, Melville describes cultural messages of mechanization, dehumanization, and repetition of employment in industrial America, ultimately suggesting a dichotomy between the upper hierarchy of commerce and those in the working class subjected to long, arduous labor as human photocopiers. The resulting human tragedy results from Bartleby's inability or unwillingness to articulate the reasons for his rebellion, ultimately leading to his alienation from society. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay In a capitalist society where a man does his job, earns his pay, and continues the process until he dies (or retires), Bartleby is an outcast. Bartleby announces that he would "rather not" follow his employer's orders or even be "a little reasonable," and the lawyer never truly contemplates Bartleby's stubborn refusal to be a working member of society. Throughout the story, Bartleby simply exists; he writes a little, but in the end he even gives up staring at the wall. Bartleby is a man who not only rejects work, he also rejects food, money, conversation and all the things that create relationships between people; As Bartleby's passivity gains momentum, he deliberately refuses to make himself known to the community around him. The narrator becomes increasingly frustrated, as Bartleby utters this line repeatedly challenges him, and eventually he reconsiders his role and “begins to stagger into his own. simpler faith” (7), doubting the rules by which his own society, as he perceives it, is at fault in this case, the law firm where he works. The crux of Bartleby's indifference to his work and life itself – and, in due course, his isolation – seems to arise from the repetitive and impersonal nature of his employment. Throughout the story Bartleby is portrayed as an isolated, mysterious and even surreal being, further developing the guise of an "invisible man". The screen that the Lawyer places around Bartleby's desk to "isolate Bartleby from [his] sight, but without removing him from [his] voice" (5) so that "privacy and society were conjoined" (5) symbolizes compartmentalization by the Advocate of the unconscious forces that Bartleby represents. Bartleby is also described as different and alone, but not in the sense of being alone, to emphasize the fact that he is exercising his own free will. Likewise he is not associated with anyone and therefore is not subject to unwanted influences; instead, he relies on his instincts to make his decisions. In this way, Melville explores the dehumanization of the working class within commerce, describing motifs of homogenization and expendability of workers. The phrase "I'd rather not do it" is an understated way of refusing to conform: Bartleby is demonstrating the power of the individual to resist social pressure to conform. By uttering the words “I would rather not”, he effectively goes on strike without ever claiming to have done so.The activity he is engaged in, writing, is intellectual, stimulating and original; but it is soon reduced to an apparently mechanical reproduction, ruinous for the minds and bodies of the workers. There is a good deal of irony in the fact that Bartleby and his colleagues are hired to copy documents, but his Wall Street colleagues do not copy his behavior. As such, his actions are ultimately pointless to the extent that they achieve no change, reflecting an important cultural message in the story. Bartleby is the embodiment of a "victim" of commerce in society: the mechanical and senseless nature of his work has stripped him of his soul and even his identity. From the beginning, the Lawyer confesses his inability to understand Bartleby, whom he refers to as "one of those beings about whom nothing can be ascertained" (1) and for whom "there are no materials for a complete and satisfactory biography" (1). . The narrator, limited by his profession and the legal logic of his imagination, proves incapable of understanding the mysterious Bartleby. It seems that no interpretation of Bartleby offered by the Lawyer can ever be complete, since the scribe is a phenomenon totally alien to the narrator's experience and sensitivity. Indeed, the lawyer's inability to understand Bartleby's resistance and his reluctance to accommodate him reveals a sense of mystery and isolation surrounding Bartleby's composure. In a passage that foreshadows his inability to understand Bartleby, the lawyer describes his other employees as mere caricatures. Quite simply, the Lawyer finds himself unable to see his workers more deeply. However, Turkey and Nippers, the two scribes, both proved their usefulness to him despite their idiosyncrasies. He refers to Türkiye as a "very precious person to me" (2) and to Nippers as "a very useful man to me" (3). Ginger Nut, the delivery boy, is also useful as "his duty as purveyor of pies and apples" (4) pacifies Türkiye and Nippers and thus makes them work. In other words, the Lawyer views his employees as useful as long as he can exploit them and profit from their work, an agenda prevalent in the workplace where bosses have a completely professional and transactional relationship with their employees. Furthermore, the other employees mirror Bartleby's lack of conscience. In fact, when he refuses to do his share of copying, their reactions are immediately hostile. Turkey actually supports the lawyer, while Nippers angrily says, "I think I should throw him out of office" (7), and Ginger Nut adds, "I think, sir, he's a bit of a fool" (7). Later, Turkey goes so far as to physically threaten Bartleby when he says, "I think I'll get behind his screen and blacken his eyes!" (8). Evidently Turkey, Nippers and Ginger Nut are even less aware of their condition as slaves than Bartleby. These tensions between scribes reveal that they are part of the machinery of modern industry and commerce; they are educated men doing boring and senseless work. “Part of the machinery” seems like an apt description of their job: later, copiers essentially replace their meaning in the office. Initially, Bartleby writes an "extraordinary amount of writing, as if he had long been hungry for something to copy" (5). This action represents both a hunger for life and a desperate attempt to dull his sensitivity in such a sterile environment. As the Lawyer himself admits, examining the copies constitutes "a very tedious, tiring and lethargic affair" (5). Nonetheless, Bartleby works "silently, palely, mechanically" (5) until the day he "would rather not" proofread any more. Confused, the lawyer says:"If there had been the slightest disquiet, anger, impatience or impertinence in his manner [...] I should have violently removed him from the office" (6). In other words, if Bartleby presented any serious threat of disobedience that would upset the class structure of the office, the Lawyer would eliminate him. But Bartleby is a bad name, and the lawyer says that he would throw away his "plaster bust of Cicero" (6) just as he would have thrown away Bartleby. With his comparison, the Lawyer reduces Bartleby to the status of an object, a commodity, further revealing the conflicts between boss and worker, or individual and company. Here begins a pattern that the Lawyer will repeat in each of his confrontations with Bartleby, depicting a transactional relationship between them. In retrospect, the Lawyer reacts to Bartleby's refusals with indecision, then backs down or withdraws from the challenge, and finally rationalizes his behavior. The Lawyer repeats this pattern in his second confrontation with Bartleby, this time taking his rationalization one step further. In justifying his decision, he convinces himself that he can "buy delicious self-approval cheaply" (8) by befriending Bartleby and not having him expelled into a society he knows is not kind to vagrants. "Making friends with Bartleby; indulging him in his strange obstinacy, will cost me little or nothing" (8), he says. The key word here is “cost”: everything becomes a question of profit and loss. The lawyer measures his moral sense, as well as his conscience, in terms of how much it will cost him, an important cultural message describing the role of commerce and its materialistic impact on people. As a result, Bartleby counts as nothing more than a commodity. in the lawyer's office. But he prefers not to be, which makes him the "most wretched of mankind" (13). The Lawyer describes him as a "thin, penniless man" (9), someone who spends all his days copying for "four cents a sheet." (one hundred words)" (9). He cannot escape from the workplace; in fact, the Lawyer eventually discovers that he is living in the office, in the void of Wall Street. As the Lawyer says, "what a miserable lack of friends and loneliness I'm here revealed! His poverty is great; but his loneliness, what horror! Think about it. On Sundays Wall Street is as deserted as Petra; and every night of every day is a void" (11). The fact that Bartleby has no history, as we learn at the beginning of the story and in a later dialogue, suggests that he came out of the lawyer's mind. He never leaves him lawyer's office and lives on practically nothing. After refusing to work, he becomes something of a parasite on the lawyer, but the exact nature of his dependence on the lawyer remains mysteriously vague. His persistent refusal to leave despite all the incitements and threats imply that he cannot leave, that his role in life is not to leave the lawyer's office Like "Marius brooding among the ruins of Carthage" (11), Bartleby lives within the deserted walls of Wall Street, representing the barren . nature of commerce in society. With his "dead wall reveries", Bartleby provides a classic example of the tragedy of the alienated man in the context of commerce, although the exact nature of his alienation remains a mystery to the lawyer and therefore for the reader. However, it is likely that his alienation derives from the dehumanizing experience of Wall Street, the metaphorical prison of his socioeconomic system, which the Lawyer's story renders in very precise detail. In this sense, Bartleby's human tragedy is that he does not become aware of the social causes of his alienation: he finds himself unable to establish a connection between the office in which he works and Wall Street in general, between his own individual alienation and the class alienation of other workers. Surrendering and embracing.