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

Natural philosophers of every century of human existence have asked what we owe to all(prenominal) other, society or government. In The Origin of Civil Society, Jean-Jacques Rousseau argued that the only natural form of duty is to ones family, and all other obligations are found on agreement (57). Henry David Thoreau, in 1849, wrote in Resistance to Civil Government (sometimes known as Civil Disobedience), it is not a mans duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even the around enormous wrong he may still properly have other concerns to engage him simply it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support (143). This sort of conflict, which has accompanied all men at the great 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 macrocosm. Tha t is to say, by reckoning at the kind between two people, Melville is able to explore the larger context around them, specifically the radical change of society in the mid-19th century. Like Thoreau, Bartlebys storied word, I would prefer not to, send a shockwave through contemporary expectations and give rise to how a person approaches a situation. Bartleby and Thoreau are both transcendentalists, and look to return to a Rousseauian state of nature. They have both arrived there after a journey of self-examination most definitely in Thoreaus case, and most probably in Bartlebys and their non-conformist attitudes raise 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 apology 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 everyth ing, it is not necessary that he should do something wrong emphasis in original (145). Bartleby, by following in the transcendentalists footsteps, does nothing, and makes a profound statement by it.Perhaps it was fated that Bartleby must die in the manner he did. After all, the narrator consulted the eminent pre-destination theologians Priestley and Edwards, and admits to believing that Bartlebys presence had been all predestinated from eternity and that it was not for a mere mortal like the narrator to fathom (167). pass judgment the idea that Bartleby is a microcosm of the macrocosm, this would imply that change is inevitable.