His Shoes

While there is a lot to do,

I prefer not to do.

If there is a shortcut you don’t know,

Be sure that you’ll be taught soon.

Make your own path

And try to fix it to better.

Put some light on it

To avoid being a slave to fake kings.

When the sun is away home,

Love it to death.

Since death makes it worthy.

Life is yummy with its end,

End is shiny with its start.

Will you prefer not to do, too?

I most notably want to insist on the regret he would feel and what he would say to us. He did not regret anything indeed yet I put myself in his shoes and reflected what I felt from his point of view. Bartleby seems to feel imprisoned in his life, and it is significant that he eventually dies in prison. He is trapped by his job as scrivener, which is one of the most triggering reasons of his indifference, and the emerging capitalist economy so much that maybe he is either unable or unwilling to explain the reason for his discontent. Perhaps Bartleby’s ability to think independently has been so damaged that he cannot even find the words to express his own desires. Through Bartleby, Melville seems to question the nature of human freedom. He not coincidentally, assures what Henry David Thoreau advocated in Civil Disobedience. According to him people must defend their rights but in a right way without guns or wars. Civil means “adhering to the norms of polite social intercourse” which indicates something like polite and orderly disobedience-unarmed- and Bartleby’s manner of conduct is a great example of the disobedience though he did not win literally.

Hidrofil Pamuk