Herman Melville uses the concept of identity to highlight certain characteristics of the characters in his short story Bartelby the Scrivener. Bartelby's character illuminates the narrator's unexplained feelings of innate compassion and pity through his actions of passive resistance. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Bartelby's mantra, "I'd rather not do it," suggests powerful implications of blatant defiance while giving the illusion of polite refusal. Although it is generally unnatural for an employee to have the freedom to exercise personal choices in their workplace and therefore not conform to the status quo, Bartelby's outright rebellion is masked by the polite nature of his challenge. On the surface, the editor's repeated use of this phrase seems as non-threatening as the way he behaves, which is perhaps why the narrator continually excuses his complete lack of obedience. The choice of word for repeated refusal also evokes the question of what Bartelby would prefer to do, if anything, pointing more toward a form of blatant defiance rather than simple preference. After Bartelby utters, "I'd rather not do it," the narrator challenges him by asking, "You won't do it?" which in turn elicits the response: “I’d rather not” (Melville 15). In this case, it is obvious that even though Bartelby does not specifically decline the narrator's question, the reaction it provokes in the narrator has the same force as it would have had if he had said "no." Despite Bartelby's passive choice of words, it is clear that he ultimately controls his free will by saying "no" simply as a form of politeness. The narrator gives off initial feelings of anger and confusion when Bartelby passively refuses to comply with his speech. requests. Unaccustomed to an employee refusing a simple request so enthusiastically, the narrator is disconcerted when Bartelby responds, "I'd rather not do it" to each of his requests. While confusion would be an appropriate emotion to describe the narrator's initial reaction upon hearing Bartelby's courteous refusal, the rapidly approaching emotions of anger and irritability quickly replaced any existing bewilderment. The narrator himself admits that "Bartelby's passivity sometimes irritated me" (14), further adding "Nothing aggravates a serious person so much as passive resistance" (13). This display of passive resistance obviously challenges and dominates the narrator's authority, causing immense emotional turmoil within the narrator, initially perceived as anger and confusion. The fact that Bartleby is able to elicit hostile emotions from the narrator is significant in itself, given that the narrator presents himself as a "man of peace" who "rarely gets angry" (4). While the exasperation only occurs for a short period of time, the reactions that Bartelby elicits from the narrator by uttering his phrase of passive resistance are notable in that they highlight the narrator's emotional range in relation to the actions of the editor throughout the story. This threatening attitude masks the colossal power he is capable of exercising over the narrator. One of the reasons the narrator is so oblivious to Bartelby's blatant defiance is due to his gentle and almost ghostly, but nonetheless mechanical, characteristics. Bartelby poses no threat to the narrator, so he is able to gain power and control over the narrator by..