bartleby the scrivener by herman melville

This is a film of Bartleby’s trailer. It has no dialogue,and the background music is very prominent is that the sound of typing on the keyboard. The word “I would prefer not” appears on the wall in the video(0:25), which is the most frequently spoken words of the protagonist of this story. 

“Will you tell me, Bartleby, where you were born?”

“I would prefer not to.”

“Will you tell me any thing about yourself?”

“I would prefer not to.”

Although it is a very simple sentence, it takes a lot of courage to say such a sentence. In fact, when I finished reading this book for the first time, I think Bartleby is a quirky and unique man and some of his refusals are very unreasonable. Of course, I admire his courage to refuse. Back to the in real life, I think each of us may be a Bartleby. Human beings are forced to learn rules“obey“ from birth. When we are children, we obeyed our parents at home. When we are teenager, we obeyed our teachers at school. When we are adults, we obey the boss in the workplace. Our family, our school, our society has taught us this rule. So can we say No?Can we just not follow this rule？Of course you can say no, but any rejection is a price. Mommy said that you can’t eat too much candy, you like candy, so you refuse to listen to Mommy’s words, secretly eat a lot, and finally you have a decayed tooth. The teacher says that homework accounts for 20% of the total grade. You don’t like homework, so you refuse to do your homework, and finally your grade is from A to B. You don’t like your job because the boss didn’t raise your salary, then you resigned, and finally you found that your salary was the highest in the industry. My example is not to prove that we have to obey the rules but we have to think about what the consequences are when we choose to refuse. Just as Bartleby choose to refuse and then he died. I suddenly remembered someone told me“If you don’t like one thing, you change it. If you can’t change, you have to accept it.”

 

“Song of Myself” by Walt Whitman

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering.

I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable,
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

The last scud of day holds back for me,
It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow’d wilds,
It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.

I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun,
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.

(Stanza 52)

I was interested in the stanza 52 of “Song of Myself” by Walt Whitman, and I found a video from YouTube that can help me understand the meaning of this poem better. In the video, the man asks some questions like“how do you end a project?If you are whitman, how do you end the Song of Myself?” Then, he explains how Whitman end the project, what does Whitman think of the end of his life. Honestly, I never thought about these questions in my life. If you ask me what I think about the end of life, I have no idea. However, Whitman gave me some ideas. Whitman says that life is continuation, there are no ending, even if the body has disappeared, it is converted into grass and grows on the ground. As he said,“I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love”, grass is a symbol of eternal life. Whitman not only identifies himself to grass but also identifies himself as other natural objects, like “I depart as air” and “I effuse my flesh in eddies”，Air is something you can’t see but that exists all the time. Eddy is a circular movement, always spinning and never stop. Therefore, Whitman used these natural objects to tell his readers what it means to be alive. Life is continuation, Life never stops, it just changes another way to live. Although Whitman died a hundred years ago, we are still reading his poems today. As he said“Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you.“ Whitman disappeared physically, but his spirit has always been here.