Patterns of Resistance in Melville (Part Three of Three)
to investigate the rest of the scrivener's life, notably his sojourn at the "Dead Letters Office."
Melville, in his depiction of passive resistance, shows himself to be influenced by the philosophy of Henry Thoreau. Active, or rather passive, at the time that Melville was writing, Thoreau experimented with the latter form of resistance at Walden Pond. His influence extends beyond Melville into the twentieth century. Leaders such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. practiced passive resistance by turning their aggressions within; by starving themselves and disavowing themselves of public transportation. In this way, they were able, like Bartleby, to deny their opponents recourse against them.
By exploring nineteenth and twentieth-century forms of resistance, while adhering to the Aristotelian and Shakespearean tragic conventions of fatal flaws and epiphanies, Melville's stories demonstrate a timelessness that justifies their placement among the classic American texts.
WORKS CITED
Aristotle. Poetics. Ed. S. H. Butcher. 1996. online. http://classics.mit.edu//Aristotle/poeti...
Melville, Herman. Billy Budd and Other Stories. Ed. Frederick Busch. New York: Penguin Books USA, Inc., 1986.
Shakespeare, William. "Hamlet." The Norton Shakespeare. Ed. Greenblatt, Stephen. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1997. Wilde, Oscar. "The Soul of Man Under Socialism." The Longman Anthology of British Literature. Ed. David Damrosch. New York: Addison Wesley, Inc., 1999.
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