Bartleby Again

Now that I have some free time on my hands, i've been writing and writing and writing and trying to ride this train of enthusiasm before it runs out, if it does. I feel like a freshman again. I am currently working on a paper about Bartleby, which was due for last semesters History Class. As usual, my first two paragrahs are the heavy hitters.

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I AM a rather young woman. The nature of my academic pursuits for the last twenty-two years has brought me into more than ordinary contact with what would seem an interesting and somewhat singular set of men and women, of whom as yet very little that I know of has ever been written:—I mean the people who would let Bartleby live. I haven't known very many of them, professionally and privately, and if I pleased, could relate divers histories, at which good-natured gentlemen might smile, and sentimental souls might weep. But you are not a good-natured gentleman, are you? Or a sentimental soul? If you are one of the 99.9% of students in my History class, then you aren't. Bartleby got what he deserved, you state. It's wrong to ride on the coattails of others. If you don't want to work, you deserve the consequences. You deserve to die you lazy bum.

I disagree.

Now, if both the reader and Mr. Herman Melville will forgive my unabashed plagiarism in the first paragraph, I'll go on to explain the cause of my disagreement and my personal investment in the topic. I would prefer not to... have to write this paper. However, I have to pass a class and graduate. I have to graduate so I can get a good job and make money to pay for food and other basic necessities. I have to graduate because my family and friends will be disappointed if I don't. I won't make a lot of money and they will think I am lazy and I'll be an outcast. If I don't work, at the very least, I'll be broke and end up on the street without a friend in the world. Then, I'll probably die. Noone will come to my funeral. Maybe some people would wonder what happened to that "lazy bum" that used to sleep on the church steps. They'll lament my lack of ambition, but they won't mourn me. When they decide the cause of death they might write on the death certificate: "starvation" or "hypothermia from sleeping in the rain". Not on my obituary. I wouldn't be worth an obituary. What they wouldn't dare write would be "died because she refused to succumb to the slavery of an economic system" or "died because we let her". No. Because noone would admit that, and that's the problem. It needs to be clear to everyone else that the problem does not lie with them, but within me. Within Bartleby. If they admitted the problem was with them, with the system, then they would be admitting that the system would have to change, they would have to change. Like the south afraid of a way of life without slavery, they would rather take up arms than admit they are wrong.