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In class today, we analyzed Melville's Bartleby, the Scrivener and I just think that it was super interesting that there was a comment in class about it being a a description on dehumanizing labour. I just feel that it's so relevant to today and the idea of jobs today. We live in a world where there's a lot of emphasis on making something your own and personalizing it to fit your needs and what you aspire or desire for in life. There's a big push for choice and diversity, however, when we looked at Bartleby and my classmate made that comment, it made me think that while personality and being an entrepreneur and making your own business and whatever is cool and all, society still survives on work where someone is literally just a cog in the machine. We work as a society where everyone has their place and if you don't necessarily fit that position, you can be easily replaced. I feel that Melville's Bartleby presents this so well because it's a such an extreme portrayal of what happens when you don't want to fit in. As Bartleby says, he just "prefer[s] not to". He overturns the idea of a working class society in doing so because he makes a choice in not doing what he and everyone else is doing. And while it seems cool to go against the flow and all, an idea especially prevalent today, this story also presents that extremity of not conforming with society. And on the other hand, it also presents the issues with this kind of society and that kind of job where it really is dehumanizing labour and it can be argued that while Bartleby is out of his mind with what he prefers not to do, it can also be a stand against the idea of conformity and going with what others expect of you. Of course, like always, there's a need for balance and this story is such an extreme case of choosing not to that it becomes sort of laughable. If any of us went to work and told our managers that we just preferred not to do our job today, we wouldn't last that long.

What I found particularly interesting about "Bartleby, the Scrivener" is its wild duality of implication in terms of the whole "cog in the corporate machine" idea.This duality is kind of built up through implication though.

On one side Bartleby's refusal to do anything doesn't just free him from the shackles of corporate bondage, his refusal to work actively disrupts the work place. It bothers his boss to the point where he spends nearly the whole story obsessing over it. So Here we have the idea that "the removal of on cog can disrupt the entire machine" in that the refusal of this one cog to function actually stops the cogs that rely on that cog to stop functioning as well. This I think hints at some latent but substantial individual power, even in the face of "dehumanizing labour".

On the other hand this is always undercut by the idea that Bartleby's boss could and should just replace him. Bartleby should be replaceable. In theory "one cog" should not bring down the entire machine.

What's so interesting about this to me is the way it plays with the readers expectation to make its point. It's the reader's expectation that Bartleby should be replaceable, that his refusal to work should not break the entire corporate machine. But it does. It subverts the reader's expectations of reality to teach them the value of a single individual in the face of society.

Side note/rebutal: Yes, as the two of you have stated, Bartleby's refusal to do anything does represent a kind of freedom gained in a refusal to adhere to societal norms. But, I don't believe that this refusal is quite as Emersonian as it seems. Or perhaps it is, but I will explain that in a second. Emerson's particular brand of Self-reliance is not simply a passive refusal to adhere to societal rules, trends and ideologies but rather and active refusal of them in favor of some personally found alternative. Bartleby's refusal is simply that, a refusal, he doesn't DO anything else instead, he simply says "I don't want to". I think Emerson would absolutely hate this idea of rebellion for the sake of rebellion. However, I think what this might highlight, from an Emersonian perspective, is the very importance of a personally driven alternative. Because the point of self-reliance is not to simply refuse to comply but to evaluate, through introspection, what facets of law and society are good or bad FOR YOU, and either comply or do something completely different in response.