The Piazza Tales Passivity Quotes

This is the lawyer who narrates "Bartleby," explaining that he is a lazy duffer who takes the easiest road possible. Bartleby is passive in some ways, but he's also stubborn in his passiveness. The narrator has a different sort of passiveness; instead of saying, "I prefer not to" he says, "Sure I will. Why not."

There's the famous line. Bartleby prefers not to check the paper, and then prefers not to write, and then prefers not to eat, and then prefers not to live. Be warned Shmoopers; once you start preferring not to, it's hard to say where all the passivity will end.

Bartleby's passivity has sometimes been compared to passive resistance, as recommended (in Melville's time) by Henry David Thoreau, and later used by Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. in political resistance movements. But passive resistance, in later terms, is connected to a political program or goal. What is Bartleby's goal? He makes no demands; he just sits there. Is passive resistance political in itself, or does it need to be connected to an actual program for change?

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. (2.84)

Again, the lawyer guy, the boss, the head honcho, is "impotent"—he's the one who's controlled by Bartleby, rather than the other way around. It's a bit like a parent catering to a toddler; being the one with the power, in this case, can leave you being controlled. (Melville did have several children, who would have been infants or toddlers around the time he wrote "Bartleby." Make of that what you will.)

The lawyer tries to argue with Bartleby by citing rights—particularly property rights. Bartleby is on the wrong side of capitalism. So you could see that as a political statement, Shmoop supposes.

The lawyer is saying he decided to get rid of Bartleby because his friends were less generous than him and nagged him. But the truth is that the lawyer always takes the easiest path. He didn't bother doing anything about Bartleby because that would have taken effort; then his friends prodded him, and so it became easier to follow along with them and try to get rid of Bartleby after all. The lawyer isn't generous; he's just lazy.

Bartleby lived without doing anything, so living for him wasn't that much different from being dead. But the Biblical quotation suggests that Bartleby wasn't that unusual; everyone dies eventually, no matter what they did with their lives. Bartleby just preferred not to pretend otherwise.

Don Benito is described through much of the book as lacking energy, or being lazy. And he is—Babo is a lot more effective than Benito is. So Benito's pretense of passivity is actually a real truth of passivity. He is as ineffectual as he looks.

Atufal is in chains; he's pacified—supposedly. Slaves were supposed to be happy in chains, or at least accepting of them, as Atufal appears to be. This is a lie though; the belief that slaves were docile was actually a way to justify enslaving them. Perhaps that's true of Bartleby as well; the people doing the drudge work are supposed to be willing to do the drudge work. The resistance is hidden by the master's refusal to see it.