Voices for Diversity and Social Justice by Landsman Julie;Salcedo Rosanna M.;Gorski Paul C.;

Author:Landsman, Julie;Salcedo, Rosanna M.;Gorski, Paul C.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2012-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Twenty-five dollars, I think. Daniel has written about his job before. He works at a restaurant he spells “Mishigan Shores.” He plates salads and desserts and sometimes waits on tables. I consider, guiltily, the $150 I earn from waitressing on the typical Friday night.

Daniel, whose father is dead, does have one sister by his real father. Yesenia is a freshman at school, and while I haven’t met her yet, I secretly hope that I teach her when she is a junior. Daniel’s job at the restaurant goes toward his and his sister’s tuition at school—$400 a month, collectively. I think about this from the back of the room while Kate, my student teacher this quarter, gets the class focused. Vocabulary words are being reviewed, words floating through the back of my brain—coruscate, ephemeral, pogrom—birthing themselves into other shards of images: Corruscating rivers, ephemeral happiness. Factories. Videophones. Brooms. Deserts. Pogrom.

Teaching American Literature, I knew Melville had to appear, if not in white whales chased by a madman, then in the form of a difficult office worker refusing to do his work—refusing to do anything. So “Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street” it was. Bartleby works as a copyist in a lawyer’s firm, and one day simply refuses to do anything at all, his mantra being, “I prefer not to.” The lawyer/narrator of the story, although a self-identified lazy man, is initially flabbergasted by this refusal, but ultimately commits himself to attempting to understand Bartleby, who has no family to speak of, no home, no appetite, even. Bartleby ultimately dies after having been sent to prison as a vagrant. All of our students have internships in corporate offices, spending one school day a week there as a way to fund this Catholic education, so I was anxious to see what types of understanding they brought to a story like “Bartleby,” a story that deals with offices much like the ones they work in.

The students are indignant after they read the story: “Why doesn’t Bartleby just do something?” they ask. I am surprised by how frustrated they are with him. If Bartleby is unreal because he refuses to work, then the lawyer is ridiculous because he refuses to demand that Bartleby work. He baffles them. “If I was his boss I would just fire him. Why doesn’t he just fire him? Jeez. They’re both insane,” one student spits. The class agrees. “What’s wrong with this guy?”

Marisol is not vocal in class about how she feels, but when she hands in her paper, there is no question. It is entitled “Who’s the Boss Now?” arguing that Bartleby exercises more power than his boss, who is more concerned with his “fraternal melancholy” with Bartleby rather than managing him at all. An employee who refuses to work means, well, that no work is done, no money made. The machine of industry stops. But the story of Bartleby and his lawyer boss could never be confused with the relationship the students’ parents have with their own employers.

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