Bartleby the scrivener i would prefer not to

Bartleby the scrivener i would prefer not to how to#

The scrivener simply continues to transcribe and copy documents, with the usual commitment but also with the usual gaze lost in emptiness. Yet, any requests for explanation is ignored. Day after day, despite the indignation of your subordinates and your inability to trace that refusal to any reason, Bartleby still refuses to perform the вЂordinaryвЂ™ tasks entrusted. His answer is extremely surprising: вЂњI would prefer not toвЂќ. However, one day you ask him to perform a different task by asking him to read a document he has drafted. You start to trust this man with each passing day, you appreciate his seriousness and his gentle nature. Bartleby works tirelessly from morning to night transcribing and copying documents, silent and pale in the desk you have assigned to him. Due to the increase in work, you decide to hire a fourth employee and the candidate is Bartleby, a вЂњpallidly neat, pitiably respectable, incurably forlorn!вЂќ. You know their nature, their strength and weakness and you can reasonably predict their actions and attitudes.

Your lifeвЂ™s motto may be summed up under the assumption вЂthe easiest way of life is the bestвЂ™. LetвЂ™s imagine you are a fairly successful lawyer of a notaryвЂ™s office on Wall Street. Faithful to this thought, I will summarize the facts as follows. I like to think that by indicating an unnamed narrator, Melville wanted to give each of us the honour of retelling the story. As for Moby DickвЂ™s Ishmael, Melville entrusts the burden of storytelling to one of the characters, an unnamed lawyer. Little does it matter that I should reveal the ending as well. By reporting the facts narrated by Melville I will reveal to you little compared to what emerges from reading the text itself. The logic of the spoiler does not apply to short stories. What has been said so far is a warning to myself, as I should not enclose anything, I should not encircle Bartleby, but rather find him somewhere along the line masterly drawn by Melville. I would like to first briefly tell the story of Bartleby the scrivener and then to highlight a point that struck me. What I have in mind is similar in spirit, but different in content. Recently, philosophers such as Giorgio Agamben and Gilles Deleuze dedicated an essay (Bartleby, la formula della creazione) to the philosophical content of the text. Some critics defined his short story as the first existential novel. The same goes for another character, Bartleby the scrivener. The outcome is uncertain, even for those who have already read the book.

Readers aspiring to explore AhabвЂ™s depths must join his damned crew, go in search of Moby Dick and fight him to the end. Not all the voices and callings are good, but the deep ones are all true and worthy of respect. Melville respected the character he had created, he listened to the very same voice luring Ahab (that was perhaps luring him too) without expressing moralistic judgments of sort. How many ex-post readings tried to assess Ahab and considered him as a Graceless man (in the Christian acceptation) or a madman lacking moral values? How many readers did interpret his death, result of the clash with the white whale, as the failure of a certain lifestyle? вЂњAhab beware of AhabвЂќ, as Melville prophetically stated.

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Bartleby the scrivener i would prefer not to how to#

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