Passive Resistance Story: Bartleby

Let's interpret the devastating effects of capitalism on people in the 18th century

with Bartleby's passive resistance!

While reading and trying to understand Bartleby, which is a sad story of nonviolent

resistance, we come across the real relationship between humankind and

freedom. It is impossible not to be intrigued by the resistance and determination

of this man, who does not fit into the patterns of the order inside. The sad part of

Bartleby's resistance is that as a figure, he is both a stranger and not a stranger to

us. Bartleby tries to create the effect of a traffic sign on all of us and maybe a

figure is written as an invitation to wake up. His determination and seemingly

reluctant attitude toward life makes it difficult to understand him at first. Therefore, I

would like to start the work by evaluating the whole work of Herman Melville's life

and the dynamics of the 19th century, the deadlocks of capitalism, that is, the

current game, and proceed from there to the point where the work wants to take

us. Then, specific to the question, in line with Slavoj Žižek's freedom approach, he

also frequently uses “I prefer not to do it.” I'll take a look at what it means.

The narrator's lawyer talks about his employees, who get angry at certain times of

the day and have characteristic features due to their busy work. These oddities

are quite open to evaluation. The story begins with descriptions that allow us to

take a look at the effects of the system, being mechanical and working on

people's lives. These two employees and lawyers tell us about us. In the capitalist

order, personal happiness and lives are arranged to depend on the state of

material things. As human beings, we were not born into this, but we still live in the

existence of this order. We are still cogs in the wheels of the same system

because of the failure of the Socialist, Communist, and other systems and the fact

that capitalism has not yet been refuted.

Bartleby, who persistently occupies the lawyer's office and finds the people in the

apartment dangerous now, encounters the law and the laws dragging him into

order again. Now, it is necessary to open the concept of freedom and explain what

freedom means legally. Freedom is not unlimited. While using our rights, we are

faced with borders, and these limits are borders such as social order, general

morality, and the rights of others. In the legal system, we do not have the freedom

to do whatever we want whenever we want. A state is established to eliminate

chaos stemming from the social contract, freedoms are transferred, and the

remaining ones are used in a limited way. And the law limits these freedoms. We

have seen how closely Bartleby touches these boundaries in the story. Occupying

the office, people starting to live in the living space are not accepted by the state

and its guardians who play a role in the order. When you disrupt the lawyer's work,

he enters his freedom area, so there is no resistance focused only on not working

in the story. Therefore, the legal system as a social society was built and some of

the freedom was shelved anyway. In the social world, where law exists, and on top

of that, freedom in the capitalist world is as sharp as the result of Bartelby's life

story. That is, freedom is not possible without being isolated from society. We must

be within the scope of being able to make choices and not making choices by

others.

If we consider Bartleby, who refuses the jobs given to him, only within the scope

of freedom to work, something is left in the air. Because he was also making social

choices. For example, not eating or leaving the place after a while. In practice,

working for the state in a socialist society is the greatest necessity, and there is

even a one-click domination relationship. Freedom is practically impossible in this

ethically and morally wrong order. However, communism promised freedom. If we

come to the capitalist society, that is, the 19th century Wall Street, it is possible not

to work here in theory, but in practice, the result is a result similar to Bartleby's

prison adventure.

It is resistant that the system does not do everything that it does not want to play

this game or, to put it more accurately, does not prefer it, even at the very

beginning. However, it should be noted that Bartleby is not only resistant to this

capitalist system. In other words, there is not only a Bartleby who is economically

passive and does not benefit the system and refuses to do the things that are

asked to be done but there is also a Bartleby who does not prefer to read the

newspaper or eat for social chores. Here, too, there are manifestations of the

freedom of many things that are social, such as the freedom not to work. There is

Bartleby, who is a master at making choices.

It is difficult to perceive him as a person in daily life, like us, because he has no

past. This creates much greater interest and curiosity. Later, this mystery is solved,

but it is already very easy to understand it, the images in the story come to the

rescue. Bartleby's old work; the story finally shows that maybe he is not a distant

character to us, he is a little more than a traffic sign, a warning image. When it is

read for the first time, one wonders if he has a past and if there is any factor that

could cause his determined attitude. For example, I would like to mention the

wildcard character here. Somewhere in your lines, a bad day is as far away as a

person says to go crazy. The resistance in Bartleby comes from a bad day of

layoffs, but it is a deeper resistance. After his job at the dead letter center, he

takes a job as a clerk for a lawyer. He is always a very organized and hardworking

employee. Even if this detail was not given in the story, I think it would not be

difficult for people to feel close to Bartleby when they read it, and to realize that

he is more than just an image.

Similar to Slavoj Žižek's thoughts, we should say that it is difficult to explain to

people who devote their lives to capital, to people whose character and life are

settled in the system, and whether they are free and free within the system. Thus,

Melville tells in a very short story with the clerk Bartleby that freedom is closely

connected with choices. Melville lived on the land for 19 years as a civil servant

because of the necessity of order rather than his passion for the seas that he

loved so much. He longed for the sea, which would be very good for him in the

psychological sense, here we can identify the writer with Bartleby, the clerk who

longs for the sky looking at the same Wall Street walls. But the story tells us more.

We have to assess the place and time in the story. The 19th century is the birth

time of Wall Street. the current order in which Bartleby utters "I'd rather not." It is

the early period of capitalism, but it is itself. Now, in the century we live in, there is

capitalism and problems come to the fore, its decay takes a long time. The occupation of Wall Street was today's resistance to the system. What Bartleby also

did was precisely early, passive resistance. Whatever we call simple resistance as

a manifestation of civil disobedience, it is a very strong revolt. This is the point in

the story where the lawyer pays attention and questions himself, and we can

attribute this to Borges's statement: "One person being irrational is enough for all

the other people and the universe to follow." At this point, readers, and lawyers,

we all listen to Bartelby's inactive, passive and harmless resistance.

At this point, if freedom means being able to choose and choosing alternatives,

Bartleby makes a choice, not all other people choose. Although the end of

Bartleby's choices in this system and on the plane are sad, he is the only person

who chooses the system. Because there is no such thing as being independent of

the system, in the process leading to independence, Bartleby is put in prison by

the order keepers and this is an order in itself. And here too, he preferred not to

exist in the system by disappearing, that is, by dying. But still, this is a choice, it

should not be forgotten. He told us that we are free in this system only by dying or

not being born. Also, the clerk who caught the lawyer's attention in the story was

someone trying to understand him. Other people in his office and the rest of the

world think that they are drinking beer, relaxing in a cafe, or working, but they do

not choose it. They are not at liberty to say that they prefer it.

"The real issue was not whether I assumed Bartleby would leave me, but whether

he would have chosen to do so. His life was based more on what he preferred

and what he did not prefer, rather than assumptions," the lawyer said. Perhaps the

phrase was revealing Bartelby's life about freedom and choice, and the language

he used was the language of freedom. The sentence that has become the motto

is not a negative attitude, but rather a choice for him. In other words, that

language is the language that is a means of expressing freedom. If I once again

interpret the words of Slavoj Žižek in the question posed differently, if we had a

language to express our freedom, we would not be free. Above, we evaluated that

freedom is not possible without isolation from society, within the scope of rule of

law and social societies. Freedom is possible in complete isolation from society.

*This article has been translated into English within the scope of the KHAS110 course.