Duty and Change in Melville’s Bartleby Essay -- Philosophy, Rousseau

Natural philosophers of every century of human existence render asked what we owe to each other, society or government. In The Origin of well-bred Society, Jean-Jacques Rousseau argued that the only natural form of duty is to ones family, and entirely other obligations are based on agreement (57). Henry David Thoreau, in 1849, wrote in Resistance to civil Government (sometimes known as Civil Disobedience), it is non a mans duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even the most enormous wrong he may dumb properly make other concerns to engage him but it is his duty, at least, to wash drawing his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it a good deal his support (143). This sort of conflict, which has accompanied all men at the extensive changes in society, is what drives conflict in Herman Melvilles Bartleby, the Scrivener. Melville, like the Byzantine architects, crafts a work of art that studies a microcosm of the m acrocosm. That is to say, by looking at the birth between two people, Melville is able to explore the larger context well-nigh them, specifically the radical change of society in the mid-19th century. Like Thoreau, Bartlebys famous word, I would prefer not to, send a shockwave by dint of contemporary expectations and give rise to how a person approaches a situation. Bartleby and Thoreau are both(prenominal) transcendentalists, and look to return to a Rousseauian state of nature. They have both arrived there after a journey of self-examination most in spades in Thoreaus case, and most probably in Bartlebys and their non-conformist attitudes tog up questions of what is expected of people with regard to their duty to society and each other. Bartleby in particular makes the nameless... ...say that Bartleby did nothing, but passive resistance is a powerful tool, whereby laws have been changed and governments have topped. Thoreau wrote a man has not everything to do, but something and because he cannot do everything, it is not necessary that he should do something wrong emphasis in original (145). Bartleby, by avocation in the transcendentalists footsteps, does nothing, and makes a profound statement by it. peradventure it was fated that Bartleby must die in the manner he did. afterward all, the narrator consulted the eminent pre-destination theologians Priestley and Edwards, and admits to believing that Bartlebys presence had been all predestinated from timeless existence and that it was not for a mere mortal like the narrator to fathom (167). judge the idea that Bartleby is a microcosm of the macrocosm, this would imply that change is inevitable.