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“With any other man I should have flown outright into a dreadful passion, scorned all further words, and thrust him ignominiously from my presence. But there was something about Bartleby that not only strangely disarmed me, but in a wonderful manner touched and disconcerted me.”
The most famous scene in “Bartleby the Scrivener” occurs when Bartleby first says “I would prefer not to” to the Lawyer. The Lawyer is, understandably, stunned when his employee states that he would prefer not to complete a task that is part of his job. However, Bartleby is so polite and so calm when he rejects the Lawyer’s request that the Lawyer cannot find it in himself to be angry with Bartleby. Instead, he allows Bartleby to do as he pleases because he feels unequipped to handle the interaction.
“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.”
Here, the Lawyer is once again pondering Bartleby and his eccentric preference to not do his job. The Lawyer refers to Bartleby’s behavior as “passive resistance” because he refuses to do what he is told while simultaneously remaining polite and unobtrusive. One gets the sense that the Lawyer would prefer Bartleby to behave in a more combative manner because then the Lawyer would know how to discipline him. Instead, the Lawyer is disarmed by Bartleby’s actions and does not know what to do.
