“I would prefer not to.” This sentence repeatedly appears in the video I selected and is also the most representative line of the protagonist.
Imagine that you have a specific career or hobby and have made achievements in this field, but suddenly, you are far from this and will not continue it anymore. This is what Bartleby did in the story. Although seemingly exaggerated, it is true. Bartleby is mysterious and lonely, who is left to people of a sad prototype that rejects the world. The phenomenon of Bartleby is widespread and not far from us. We can even say it as a personality symbol in the depths of each of us. To everyone, there is a shadow of him.
According to the story of the scriveners on Wall Street, this book demonstrates the dilemma of interpersonal relationships in the rapid development of modern society. The scriveners represent a group junior staffs whose work and life are standardized and mechanized repeatedly every day according to the labor employment contracts. The video I chose vividly restored the scenes in the book that happened in the office by using several simple minifigures. Such small scene restorations are not only interesting but also intuitive. When watching this video, readers can easily follow the perspective of the old lawyer. Although the background of the story is Wall Street more than a hundred years ago, the office workplace ecology seems to have no difference in time and space. Even in the 21st century, there is deep resonance.
There are three other scriveners in the story, Turkey, Nippers and Nut, who have their own hobbies and habits, but they all listen to the employer’s orders to complete the daily tasks and make the daily operation of the office in a delicate balance. However, Bartleby, a former member of the “Dead Letter” Group, is a maverick clerk. He broke the contractual spirit prevailing in modern society, refused to obey the boss’s orders, and sometimes even motionless, without words, stubborn and weird. There are several descriptions of these images in the text that reflects this contrast, for example, “Half-past twelve o’clock came; Turkey began to glow in the face, overturn his inkstand, and become generally obstreperous; Nippers abated down into quietude and courtesy; Ginger Nut munched his noon apple, and Bartleby remained standing at his window in one of his profoundest dead-wall reveries.”
In fact, the change in Bartleby’s work attitude is not without reason. The simple writing and copying behaviors of lawyers and scriveners are actually helping the real estate capitalists to squeeze people who cannot afford a house or can’t live in a house. “Do you not see the reason for yourself” when asking Bartleby about the reason for his changing he indifferently replied. If we can link the scriveners’ job to the injustice of capitalism, then Bartleby makes sense. It symbolizes the subversion of the established social order and the faint voice on the edge of the mainstream ideology. Unfortunately, this resistance was finally proved to be ineffective, and it led to his self-destruction. On the other hand, whether this resistance is valuable or not, it deserves more thinking.