Today, I suppose they might say Bartleby was a quiet quitter.
Or not. Because quiet quitting is the practice of not being taken advantage of by an employer who expects 80 hours of work a week for 40 hours' worth of pay. What Bartleby does in this story by Herman Melville is basically not want to work and not be bothered if he doesn't have money, or food, or shelter at all.
The story can be found here (ironically or not at bartleby.com).
While the writing is typically stilted, I found this teleplay more accessible:
Not only does it star a very young Greg Brady, it also cuts through Melville's florid descriptions but doesn't leave out the odd mystery behind Bartleby's behavior which opens up a lot of possibilities to discuss free will and the responsibilities and consequences thereof.
And it's tempting to call the story nihlistic, but it's not. Because Bartleby isn't in the clutches of nefarious schemers bent on his destruction, but rather chooses to reject what the vast majority of use recognize: Work is necessary. It can be fulfilling. And charity, when offered, can be accepted. But the free will above all decides how we react, and if we react only with free will, it can be to our own destruction.
An interesting aside: Douglas Adams pokes fun at the story in "Mostly Harmless," Chapter 12, where Arthur Dent settles on the Planet Bartledan where no one really wants to do anything and the protagonist of a local novel inexplicably dies of thirst before the story is finished.
So yeah, it's a weird one.
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