Instructions: Read this next section from Bartleby, and answer the response questions at
the end. Reading Response due Tuesday, Oct 3rd.
Nothing so aggravates an earnest person as a passive resistance. If the individual so resisted be of
a not inhumane temper, and the resisting one perfectly harmless in his passivity; then, in the
better moods of the former, he will endeavor charitably to construe to his imagination what
proves impossible to be solved by his judgment. Even so, for the most part, I regarded Bartleby
and his ways. Poor fellow! thought I, he means no mischief; it is plain he intends no insolence;
his aspect sufficiently evinces that his eccentricities are involuntary. He is useful to me. I can get
along with him. If I turn him away, the chances are he will fall in with some less indulgent
employer, and then he will be rudely treated, and perhaps driven forth miserably to starve. Yes.
Here I can cheaply purchase a delicious self-approval. To befriend Bartleby; to humor him in his
strange willfulness, will cost me little or nothing, while I lay up in my soul what will eventually
prove a sweet morsel for my conscience. But this mood was not invariable with me. The
passiveness of Bartleby sometimes irritated me. I felt strangely goaded on to encounter him in
new opposition, to elicit some angry spark from him answerable to my own. But indeed I might
as well have essayed to strike fire with my knuckles against a bit of Windsor soap. But one
afternoon the evil impulse in me mastered me, and the following little scene ensued:
“Bartleby,” said I, “when those papers are all copied, I will compare them with you.”
“I would prefer not to.” “How? Surely you do not mean to persist in that mulish vagary?” No
answer. I threw open the folding-doors near by, and turning upon Turkey and Nippers,
exclaimed in an excited manner— “He says, a second time, he won’t examine his papers. What
do you think of it, Turkey?” It was afternoon, be it remembered. Turkey sat glowing like a brass
boiler, his bald head steaming, his hands reeling among his blotted papers. “Think of it?” roared
Turkey; “I think I’ll just step behind his screen, and black his eyes for him!” So saying, Turkey
rose to his feet and threw his arms into a pugilistic position.
He was hurrying away to make good his promise, when I detained him, alarmed at the effect of
incautiously rousing Turkey’s combativeness after dinner.
“Sit down, Turkey,” said I, “and hear what Nippers has to say. What do you think of it, Nippers?
Would I not be justified in immediately dismissing Bartleby?”
“Excuse me, that is for you to decide, sir. I think his conduct quite unusual, and indeed unjust, as
regards Turkey and myself. But it may only be a passing whim.”
“Ah,” exclaimed I, “you have strangely changed your mind then—you speak very gently of him
now.”
“All beer,” cried Turkey; “gentleness is effects of beer—Nippers and I dined together to-day.
You see how gentle I am, sir. Shall I go and black his eyes?”
“You refer to Bartleby, I suppose. No, not to-day, Turkey,” I replied; “pray, put up your fists.”
I closed the doors, and again advanced towards Bartleby. I felt additional incentives tempting me
to my fate. I burned to be rebelled against again. I re- membered that Bartleby never left the
office.
“Bartleby,” said I, “Ginger Nut is away; just step round to the Post Office, won’t you? (it was but
a three minute walk,) and see if there is anything for me.”
“I would prefer not to.” “You will not?” “I prefer not.” I staggered to my desk, and sat there in
a deep study. My blind inveteracy
returned. Was there any other thing in which I could procure myself to be ignominiously
repulsed by this lean, penniless wight?—my hired clerk? What added thing is there, perfectly
reasonable, that he will be sure to refuse to do?
“Bartleby!” No answer. “Bartleby,” in a louder tone. No answer. “Bartleby,” I roared. Like a
very ghost, agreeably to the laws of magical invocation, at the third
summons, he appeared at the entrance of his hermitage. “Go to the next room, and tell Nippers
to come to me.” “I prefer not to,” he respectfully and slowly said, and mildly disappeared. “Very
good, Bartleby,” said I, in a quiet sort of serenely severe self-possessed tone, intimating the
unalterable purpose of some terrible retribution very close at hand. At the moment I half intended
something of the kind. But upon the whole, as it was drawing towards my dinner-hour, I thought
it best to put on my hat and walk home for the day, suffering much from perplexity and distress
of mind.
Shall I acknowledge it? The conclusion of this whole business was, that it soon became a fixed
fact of my chambers, that a pale young scrivener, by the name of Bartleby, had a desk there; that
he copied for me at the usual rate of four cents a folio (one hundred words); but he was
permanently exempt from examining the work done by him, that duty being transferred to
Turkey and Nippers, one of compliment doubtless to their superior acuteness; moreover, said
Bartleby was never on any account to be dispatched on the most trivial errand of any sort; and
that even if entreated to take upon him such a matter, it was generally understood that he would
prefer not to—in other words, that he would refuse pointblank.
As days passed on, I became considerably reconciled to Bartleby. His steadiness, his freedom
from all dissipation, his incessant industry (except when he chose to throw himself into a
standing revery behind his screen), his great, still- ness, his unalterableness of demeanor under
all circumstances, made him a valuable acquisition. One prime thing was this,—he was always
there;—first in the morning, continually through the day, and the last at night. I had a singular
confidence in his honesty. I felt my most precious papers perfectly safe in his hands. Sometimes
to be sure I could not, for the very soul of me, avoid falling into sudden spasmodic passions with
him. For it was exceeding difficult to bear in mind all the time those strange peculiarities,
privileges, and unheard of exemptions, forming the tacit stipulations on Bartleby’s part under
which he remained in my office. Now and then, in the eagerness of dispatching pressing
business, I would inadvertently summon Bartleby, in a short, rapid tone, to put his finger, say, on
the incipient tie of a bit of red tape with which I was about compressing some papers. Of course,
from behind the screen the usual answer, “I prefer not to,” was sure to come; and then, how
could a human creature with the common infirmities of our nature, refrain from bitterly
exclaiming upon such perverseness—such unreasonableness. However, every added repulse of
this sort which I received only tended to lessen the probability of my repeating the inadvertence.
Here it must be said, that according to the custom of most legal gentlemen occupying chambers
in densely-populated law buildings, there were several keys to my door. One was kept by a
woman residing in the attic, which person weekly scrubbed and daily swept and dusted my
apartments. Another was kept by Turkey for convenience sake. The third I sometimes carried in
my own pocket. The fourth I knew not who had.
Now, one Sunday morning I happened to go to Trinity Church, to hear a celebrated preacher, and
finding myself rather early on the ground, I thought I would walk around to my chambers for a
while. Luckily I had my key with me; but upon applying it to the lock, I found it resisted by
something inserted from the inside. Quite surprised, I called out; when to my consternation a key
was turned from within; and thrusting his lean visage at me, and holding the door ajar, the
apparition of Bartleby appeared, in his shirt sleeves, and otherwise in a strangely tattered
dishabille, saying quietly that he was sorry, but he was deeply engaged just then, and—preferred
not admitting me at present. In a brief word or two, he moreover added, that perhaps I had better
walk round the block two or three times, and by that time he would probably have concluded his
affairs.
Now, the utterly unsurmised appearance of Bartleby, tenanting my law-chambers of a Sunday
morning, with his cadaverously gentlemanly nonchalance, yet withal firm and self-possessed,
had such a strange effect upon me, that incontinently I slunk away from my own door, and did as
desired. But not without sundry twinges of impotent rebellion against the mild effrontery of this
unaccountable scrivener. Indeed, it was his wonderful mildness chiefly, which not only disarmed
me, but unmanned me, as it were. For I consider that one, for the time, is a sort of unmanned
when he tranquilly permits his hired clerk to dictate to him, and order him away from his own
premises. Furthermore, I was full of uneasiness as to what Bartleby could possibly be doing in
my office in his shirt sleeves, and in an otherwise dismantled condition of a Sunday morning.
Was anything amiss going on? Nay, that was out of the question. It was not to be thought of for a
moment that Bartleby was an immoral person. But what could he be doing there?—copying?
Nay again, whatever might be his eccentricities, Bartleby was an eminently decorous person. He
would be the last man to sit down to his desk in any state approaching to nudity. Besides, it was
Sunday; and there was something about Bartleby that forbade the supposition that he would by
any secular occupation violate the proprieties of the day.
Nevertheless, my mind was not pacified; and full of a restless curiosity, at last I returned to the
door. Without hindrance I inserted my key, opened it, and entered. Bartleby was not to be seen. I
looked round anxiously, peeped behind his screen; but it was very plain that he was gone. Upon
more closely examining the place, I surmised that for an indefinite period Bartleby must have
ate, dressed, and slept in my office, and that too without plate, mirror, or bed. The cushioned seat
of a rickety old sofa in one corner bore the faint impress of a lean, reclining form. Rolled away
under his desk, I found a blanket; under the empty grate, a blacking box and brush; on a chair, a
tin basin, with soap and a ragged towel; in a newspaper a few crumbs of ginger-nuts and a
morsel of cheese. Yes, thought I, it is evident enough that Bartleby has been making his home
here, keeping bachelor’s hall all by himself. Immediately then the thought came sweeping across
me, What miserable friendlessness and loneliness are here revealed! His poverty is great; but his
solitude, how horrible! Think of it. Of a Sunday, Wall-street is deserted as Petra; and every night
of every day it is an emptiness. This building too, which of week-days hums with industry and
life, at nightfall echoes with sheer vacancy, and all through Sunday is forlorn. And here Bartleby
makes his home; sole spectator of a solitude which he has seen all populous—a sort of innocent
and transformed Marius brooding among the ruins of Carthage!
For the first time in my life a feeling of overpowering stinging melancholy seized me. Before, I
had never experienced aught but a not-unpleasing sadness. The bond of a common humanity
now drew me irresistibly to gloom. A fraternal melancholy! For both I and Bartleby were sons of
Adam. I remembered the bright silks and sparkling faces I had seen that day, in gala trim, swanlike sailing down the Mississippi of Broadway; and I contrasted them with the pallid copyist, and
thought to myself, Ah, happiness courts the light, so we deem the world is gay; but misery hides
aloof, so we deem that misery there is none. These sad fancyings—chimeras, doubtless, of a sick
and silly brain—led on to other and more special thoughts, concerning the eccentricities of
Bartleby. Presentiments of strange discoveries hovered round me. The scrivener’s pale form
appeared to me laid out, among uncaring strangers, in its shivering winding sheet.
Suddenly I was attracted by Bartleby’s closed desk, the key in open sight left in the lock.
I mean no mischief, seek the gratification of no heartless curiosity, thought I; besides, the desk is
mine, and its contents too, so I will make bold to look within. Everything was methodically
arranged, the papers smoothly placed. The pigeon holes were deep, and removing the files of
documents, I groped into their recesses. Presently I felt something there, and dragged it out. It
was an old bandanna handkerchief, heavy and knotted. I opened it, and saw it was a savings’
bank.
I now recalled all the quiet mysteries which I had noted in the man. I remembered that he never
spoke but to answer; that though at intervals he had consider- able time to himself, yet I had
never seen him reading—no, not even a newspaper; that for long periods he would stand looking
out, at his pale window behind the screen, upon the dead brick wall; I was quite sure he never
visited any refectory or eating house; while his pale face clearly indicated that he never drank
beer like Turkey, or tea and coffee even, like other men; that he never went any where in
particular that I could learn; never went out for a walk, unless indeed that was the case at present;
that he had declined telling who he was, or whence he came, or whether he had any relatives in
the world; that though so thin and pale, he never complained of ill health. And more than all, I
remembered a certain unconscious air of pallid—how shall I call it?—of pallid haughtiness, say,
or rather an austere reserve about him, which had positively awed me into my tame compliance
with his eccentricities, when I had feared to ask him to do the slightest incidental thing for me,
even though I might know, from his long-continued motionlessness, that behind his screen he
must be standing in one of those dead-wall reveries of his.
Revolving all these things, and coupling them with the recently discovered fact that he made my
office his constant abiding place and home, and not forgetful of his morbid moodiness; revolving
all these things, a prudential feeling began to steal over me. My first emotions had been those of
pure melancholy and sincerest pity; but just in proportion as the forlornness of Bartleby grew and
grew to my imagination, did that same melancholy merge into fear, that pity into repulsion. So
true it is, and so terrible too, that up to a certain point the thought or sight of misery enlists our
best affections; but, in certain special cases, beyond that point it does not. They err who would
assert that invariably this is owing to the inherent selfishness of the human heart. It rather
proceeds from a certain hopelessness of remedying excessive and organic ill. To a sensitive
being, pity is not seldom pain. And when at last it is perceived that such pity cannot lead to
effectual succor, common sense bids the soul rid of it. What I saw that morning persuaded me
that the scrivener was the victim of innate and incurable disorder. I might give alms to his body;
but his body did not pain him; it was his soul that suffered, and his soul I could not reach.
I did not accomplish the purpose of going to Trinity Church that morning. Somehow, the things I
had seen disqualified me for the time from church-going. I walked homeward, thinking what I
would do with Bartleby. Finally, I resolved upon this;—I would put certain calm questions to
him the next morning, touching his history, etc., and if he declined to answer them openly and
unreservedly (and I supposed he would prefer not), then to give him a twenty dollar bill over and
above whatever I might owe him, and tell him his services were no longer required; but that if in
any other way I could assist him, I would be happy to do so, especially if he desired to return to
his native place, wherever that might be, I would willingly help to defray the expenses.
Moreover, if, after reaching home, he found himself at any time in want of aid, a letter from him
would be sure of a reply.
The next morning came. “Bartleby,” said I, gently calling to him behind his screen. No
reply. “Bartleby,” said I, in a still gentler tone, “come here; I am not going to ask
you to do anything you would prefer not to do—I simply wish to speak to you.” Upon this he
noiselessly slid into view. “Will you tell me, Bartleby, where you were born?” “I would prefer
not to.”
“Will you tell me anything about yourself?” “I would prefer not to.” “But what reasonable
objection can you have to speak to me? I feel friendly
towards you.” He did not look at me while I spoke, but kept his glance fixed upon my bust
of Cicero, which as I then sat, was directly behind me, some six inches above my head.
“What is your answer, Bartleby?” said I, after waiting a considerable time for a reply, during
which his countenance remained immovable, only there was the faintest conceivable tremor of
the white attenuated mouth.
“At present I prefer to give no answer,” he said, and retired into his hermitage.
It was rather weak in me I confess, but his manner on this occasion nettled me. Not only did
there seem to lurk in it a certain calm disdain, but his perverse- ness seemed ungrateful,
considering the undeniable good usage and indulgence he had received from me.
Again I sat ruminating what I should do. Mortified as I was at his behavior, and resolved as I had
been to dismiss him when I entered my offices, nevertheless I strangely felt something
superstitious knocking at my heart, and forbidding me to carry out my purpose, and denouncing
me for a villain if I dared to breathe one bitter word against this forlornest of mankind. At last,
familiarly drawing my chair behind his screen, I sat down and said: “Bartleby, never mind then
about revealing your history; but let me entreat you, as a friend, to comply as far as may be with
the usages of this office. Say now you will help to examine papers to-morrow or next day: in
short, say now that in a day or two you will begin to be a little reasonable:—say so, Bartleby.”
“At present I would prefer not to be a little reasonable,” was his mildly cadaverous reply.
Just then the folding-doors opened, and Nippers approached. He seemed suffering from an
unusually bad night’s rest, induced by severer indigestion then common. He overheard those
final words of Bartleby.
“Prefer not, eh?” gritted Nippers—"I’d prefer him, if I were you, sir,” addressing me—"I’d
prefer him; I’d give him preferences, the stubborn mule! What is it, sir, pray, that he prefers not
to do now?”
Bartleby moved not a limb. “Mr. Nippers,” said I, “I’d prefer that you would withdraw for the
present.” Somehow, of late I had got into the way of involuntarily using this word “prefer” upon
all sorts of not exactly suitable occasions. And I trembled to think that my contact with the
scrivener had already and seriously affected me in a mental way. And what further and deeper
aberration might it not yet produce? This apprehension had not been without efficacy in
determining me to summary means.
As Nippers, looking very sour and sulky, was departing, Turkey blandly and deferentially
approached.
“With submission, sir,” said he, “yesterday I was thinking about Bartleby here, and I think that if
he would but prefer to take a quart of good ale every day, it would do much towards mending
him, and enabling him to assist in examining his papers.”
“So you have got the word too,” said I, slightly excited.
“With submission, what word, sir,” asked Turkey, respectfully crowding him- self into the
contracted space behind the screen, and by so doing, making me jostle the scrivener. “What
word, sir?”
“I would prefer to be left alone here,” said Bartleby, as if offended at being mobbed in his
privacy.
“That’s the word, Turkey,” said I—"that’s it.”
“Oh, prefer? oh yes—queer word. I never use it myself. But, sir, as I was saying, if he would but
prefer—”
“Turkey,” interrupted I, “you will please withdraw.” “Oh certainly, sir, if you prefer that I
should.” As he opened the folding-door to retire, Nippers at his desk caught a glimpse of me,
and asked whether I would prefer to have a certain paper copied on blue paper or white. He did
not in the least roguishly accent the word prefer. It was plain that it involuntarily rolled form his
tongue. I thought to myself, surely I must get rid of a demented man, who already has in some
degree turned the tongues, if not the heads of myself and clerks. But I thought it prudent not to
break the dismission at once.
The next day I noticed that Bartleby did nothing but stand at his window in his dead-wall revery.
Upon asking him why he did not write, he said that he had decided upon doing no more writing.
“Why, how now? what next?” exclaimed I, “do no more writing?” “No more.” “And what is the
reason?” “Do you not see the reason for yourself,” he indifferently replied. I looked steadfastly
at him, and perceived that his eyes looked dull and glazed.
Instantly it occurred to me, that his unexampled diligence in copying by his dim window for the
first few weeks of his stay with me might have temporarily impaired his vision.
I was touched. I said something in condolence with him. I hinted that of course he did wisely in
abstaining from writing for a while; and urged him to embrace that opportunity of taking
wholesome exercise in the open air. This, however, he did not do. A few days after this, my other
clerks being absent, and being in a great hurry to dispatch certain letters by the mail, I thought
that, having nothing else earthly to do, Bartleby would surely be less inflexible than usual, and
carry these letters to the post-office. But he blankly declined. So, much to my inconvenience, I
went myself.
Still added days went by. Whether Bartleby’s eyes improved or not, I could not say. To all
appearance, I thought they did. But when I asked him if they did, he vouchsafed no answer. At
all events, he would do no copying. At last, in reply to my urgings, he informed me that he had
permanently given up copying.
“What!” exclaimed I; “suppose your eyes should get entirely well— better than ever before—
would you not copy then?”
“I have given up copying,” he answered, and slid aside.
He remained as ever, a fixture in my chamber. Nay—if that were possible—he became still more
of a fixture than before. What was to be done? He would do nothing in the office: why should he
stay there? In plain fact, he had now become a millstone to me, not only useless as a necklace,
but afflictive to bear. Yet I was sorry for him. I speak less than truth when I say that, on his own
account, he occasioned me uneasiness. If he would but have named a single relative or friend, I
would instantly have written, and urged their taking the poor fellow away to some convenient
retreat. But he seemed alone, absolutely alone in the universe. A bit of wreck in the mid-Atlantic.
At length, necessities connected with my business tyrannized over all other considerations.
Decently as I could, I told Bartleby that in six days’ time he must unconditionally leave the
office. I warned him to take measures, in the interval, for procuring some other abode. I offered
to assist him in this endeavor, if he himself would but take the first step towards a removal. “And
when you finally quit me, Bartleby,” added I, “I shall see that you go not away entirely
unprovided. Six days from this hour, remember.”
At the expiration of that period, I peeped behind the screen, and lo! Bartleby was there.
I buttoned up my coat, balanced myself; advanced slowly towards him, touched his shoulder, and
said, “The time has come; you must quit this place; I am sorry for you; here is money; but you
must go.”
“I would prefer not,” he replied, with his back still towards me. “You must.” He remained
silent. Now I had an unbounded confidence in this man’s common honesty. He had frequently
restored to me sixpences and shillings carelessly dropped upon the floor, for I am apt to be very
reckless in such shirt-button affairs. The proceeding then which followed will not be deemed
extraordinary.
“Bartleby,” said I, “I owe you twelve dollars on account; here are thirty-two; the odd twenty are
yours.—Will you take it?” and I handed the bills towards him.
But he made no motion.
“I will leave them here then,” putting them under a weight on the table. Then taking my hat and
cane and going to the door I tranquilly turned and added— "After you have removed your things
from these offices, Bartleby, you will of course lock the door—since every one is now gone for
the day but you—and if you please, slip your key underneath the mat, so that I may have it in the
morning. I shall not see you again; so good-bye to you. If hereafter in your new place of abode I
can be of any service to you, do not fail to advise me by letter. Good-bye, Bartleby, and fare you
well.”
But he answered not a word; like the last column of some ruined temple, he remained standing
mute and solitary in the middle of the otherwise deserted room.
As I walked home in a pensive mood, my vanity got the better of my pity. I could not but highly
plume myself on my masterly management in getting rid of Bartleby. Masterly I call it, and such
it must appear to any dispassionate thinker. The beauty of my procedure seemed to consist in its
perfect quietness. There was no vulgar bullying, no bravado of any sort, no choleric hectoring,
and striding to and fro across the apartment, jerking out vehement commands for Bartleby to
bundle himself off with his beggarly traps. Nothing of the kind. Without loudly bidding Bartleby
depart—as an inferior genius might have done— I assumed the ground that depart he must; and
upon that assumption built all I had to say. The more I thought over my procedure, the more I
was charmed with it. Nevertheless, next morning, upon awakening, I had my doubts,—I had
somehow slept off the fumes of vanity. One of the coolest and wisest hours a man has, is just
after he awakes in the morning. My procedure seemed as sagacious as ever.—but only in theory.
How it would prove in practice—there was the rub. It was truly a beautiful thought to have
assumed Bartleby’s departure; but, after all, that assumption was simply my own, and none of
Bartleby’s. The great point was, not whether I had assumed that he would quit me, but whether
he would prefer so to do. He was more a man of preferences than assumptions.
After breakfast, I walked down town, arguing the probabilities pro and con. One moment I
thought it would prove a miserable failure, and Bartleby would be found all alive at my office as
usual; the next moment it seemed certain that I should see his chair empty. And so I kept veering
about. At the corner of Broadway and Canal-street, I saw quite an excited group of people
standing in earnest conversation.
“I’ll take odds he doesn’t,” said a voice as I passed. “Doesn’t go?—done!” said I, “put up your
money.” I was instinctively putting my hand in my pocket to produce my own, when
I remembered that this was an election day. The words I had overheard bore no reference to
Bartleby, but to the success or non-success of some candidate for the mayoralty. In my intent
frame of mind, I had, as it were, imagined that all Broad- way shared in my excitement, and were
debating the same question with me. I passed on, very thankful that the uproar of the street
screened my momentary absent-mindedness.
As I had intended, I was earlier than usual at my office door. I stood listening for a moment. All
was still. He must be gone. I tried the knob. The door was locked. Yes, my procedure had
worked to a charm; he indeed must be vanished. Yet a certain melancholy mixed with this: I was
almost sorry for my brilliant success. I was fumbling under the door mat for the key, which
Bartleby was to have left there for me, when accidentally my knee knocked against a panel,
producing a summoning sound, and in response a voice came to me from within—"Not yet; I am
occupied.”
It was Bartleby.
I was thunderstruck. For an instant I stood like the man who, pipe in mouth, was killed one
cloudless afternoon long ago in Virginia, by a summer lightning; at his own warm open window
he was killed, and remained leaning out there upon the dreamy afternoon, till some one touched
him, when he fell.
“Not gone!” I murmured at last. But again obeying that wondrous ascendancy which the
inscrutable scrivener had over me, and from which ascendancy, for all my chafing, I could not
completely escape, I slowly went down stairs and out into the street, and while walking round the
block, considered what I should next do in this unheard-of perplexity. Turn the man out by an
actual thrusting I could not; to drive him away by calling him hard names would not do; calling
in the police was an unpleasant idea; and yet, permit him to enjoy his cadaverous triumph over
me,—this too I could not think of. What was to be done? or, if nothing could be done, was there
any thing further that I could assume in the matter? Yes, as before I had prospectively assumed
that Bartleby would depart, so now I might retrospectively assume that departed he was. In the
legitimate carrying out of this assumption, I might enter my office in a great hurry, and pretending not to see Bartleby at all, walk straight against him as if he were air. Such a proceeding
would in a singular degree have the appearance of a home-thrust. It was hardly possible that
Bartleby could withstand such an application of the doc- trine of assumptions. But upon second
thoughts the success of the plan seemed rather dubious. I resolved to argue the matter over with
him again.
“Bartleby,” said I, entering the office, with a quietly severe expression, “I am seriously
displeased. I am pained, Bartleby. I had thought better of you. I had imagined you of such a
gentlemanly organization, that in any delicate dilemma a slight hint would suffice—in short, an
assumption. But it appears I am deceived. Why,” I added, unaffectedly starting, “you have not
even touched that money yet,” pointing to it, just where I had left it the evening previous.
He answered nothing.
“Will you, or will you not, quit me?” I now demanded in a sudden passion, advancing close to
him.
“I would prefer not to quit you,” he replied, gently emphasizing the not.
“What earthly right have you to stay here? Do you pay any rent? Do you pay my taxes? Or is this
property yours?”
He answered nothing.
“Are you ready to go on and write now? Are your eyes recovered? Could you copy a small paper
for me this morning? or help examine a few lines? or step round to the post-office? In a word,
will you do any thing at all, to give a coloring to your refusal to depart the premises?”
He silently retired into his hermitage.
Response Questions:
1. Why doesn’t the narrator just fire Bartleby?
2. Explain Bartleby’s passive resistance. How can this relate to our discussions about
alienation?
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