In Wall and Piece Banksy wrote: “The greatest crimes in the world are not committed by people breaking the rules but by people following the rules.” This quotation undoubtedly fits the story of Herman Melville’s Bartleby and Kate Chopin’s Edna Pontellier. Two characters: a woman and a man who despite living different lives in different places share an unnamed disease burning them from the inside. When life is deprived of sense the only possible form of rebellion is lasting still. Refusal of making an act is the highest form of rebellion because acting against would mean accepting a form (a scheme) but non acting at all means not only resistance to the rule but also rejection of the idea itself. In those two pieces intertwine the concern about the condition on humanity but also a gloomy thought of death as the only act of liberation.
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It is a story of a lawyer from Wall Street who hires a new clerk — Bartleby. The scrivener and the answer “I would prefer not to” became canonical and Albert Camus listed Melville’s piece as a key influence. Kate Chopin work form 1899 — The Awakening — is considered to be a masterpiece and precursory piece of American modernist literature. A protagonist — Edna Pontellier — a respectable wife and mother who consecutively, as the story proceeds, discovers an identity different from the one imposed by the society. Clearly Bartleby's and Edna’s lives seem to be very different form each other however there are many parallels. First, both of them are characters who do not have agency. They lack of financial independence as well as, due to their place in society (a clerk and a woman), they are unable to have an impact on the others. It puts them into position where life is not precisely in their hands — when a person is not fully capable of deciding about oneself it means that agency is shifted from the inside to the
It is a story of a lawyer from Wall Street who hires a new clerk — Bartleby. The scrivener and the answer “I would prefer not to” became canonical and Albert Camus listed Melville’s piece as a key influence. Kate Chopin work form 1899 — The Awakening — is considered to be a masterpiece and precursory piece of American modernist literature. A protagonist — Edna Pontellier — a respectable wife and mother who consecutively, as the story proceeds, discovers an identity different from the one imposed by the society. Clearly Bartleby's and Edna’s lives seem to be very different form each other however there are many parallels. First, both of them are characters who do not have agency. They lack of financial independence as well as, due to their place in society (a clerk and a woman), they are unable to have an impact on the others. It puts them into position where life is not precisely in their hands — when a person is not fully capable of deciding about oneself it means that agency is shifted from the inside to the