Herman Melville's Bartleby the Scrivener

The extremely simplified definition of civil disobedience given by Webster’s Dictionary is “nonviolent opposition to a law through refusal to comply with it, on grounds of conscience.”

Thoreau in “Civil Disobedience” and Martin Luther King in “Letter from Birmingham Jail” both argue that laws thought of as unjust in one’s mind should not be adhered to. In Herman Melville’s “Bartleby,” a man named Bartleby is thought of by many to be practicing civil disobedience. His actions are nonviolent, and he refuses to comply with anything his boss says. But his behavior has nothing to do with morals. Bartleby is merely a lonely guy who does not wish to work and has nothing to do with civil disobedience.

Thoreau says that if injustice “is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then I say break the law” (Jacobus 134). He is personally giving permission for an individual to ignore anything he or she finds morally unacceptable. However, in “Bartleby,” Bartleby’s boss places no unjust laws and assigns no unjust work. He simply asks Bartleby to do easy tasks such as, “when those papers are all copied, I will compare them with you”, or, “just step around the Post Office, won’t you? And see if there is anything for me” (Melville 116). The boss, who is also the narrator, never requests Bartleby to perform any difficult chores. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s interpretation of an unjust law is, “a code that a numerical or power m...