Herman Melville uses the concept of identity to highlight some characteristics of the characters in his short story Bartelby the Scribe. Bartelby's character highlights the narrator's inexplicable 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 Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Bartelby's mantra, "I'd rather not do that," suggests powerful implications of overt defiance while giving the illusion of only polite rejection. While it is typically unnatural for an employee to have the freedom to exercise personal choice in the workplace and therefore obviously not conform to the status quo, Bartelby's outright rebellion is masked by the polite nature of his challenge. On the surface, the scribe's repeated use of this phrase seems as non-threatening as the way he behaves, perhaps being the reason why the narrator continually excuses his total lack of obedience. The word choice of repeated refusal also evokes the question of what Bartelby would prefer to do, if anything, further indicating a form of overt defiance rather than simple preference. After Bartelby says, "I'd rather not," the narrator challenges him by asking, "Won't you?" which in turn elicits the response, “I prefer not to” (Melville 15). In this case it is evident that, although Bartelby does not specifically reject the narrator's question, the reaction it provokes in the narrator has the same force as if he had said "no". Despite Bartelby's passive choice of words, it is clear that he is ultimately in control of his own free will by saying "no," simply through a form of politeness. The narrator exudes initial feelings of anger and confusion when Bartelby passively refuses to conform to his ideas. requests. Unused to an employee so unenthusiastically turning down a simple request, the narrator is disconcerted when Bartelby responds, "I'd rather not" to his every request. While confusion would be an appropriate emotion to describe the narrator's initial reaction upon hearing Bartelby's polite refusal, rapidly approaching emotions of anger and irritability quickly replaced any previously 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 challenges and obviously overwhelms the narrator's authority, causing immense emotional turmoil within the narrator, initially seen as anger and confusion. The fact that Bartleby is able to bring out any hostile emotion from the narrator is itself significant, considering that the narrator presents himself as a "man of peace" who "rarely loses his temper" (4). of exasperation only occur for a short period of time, the reactions Bartelby elicits from the narrator by uttering his phrase of passive resistance are noteworthy as they show the narrator's emotional range in relation to the scribe's actions throughout the story. -The menacing manner masks the colossal power he is able to exercise over the narrator. One of the reasons the narrator is so oblivious to Bartelby's obvious defiance is due to his mild and almost ghostly, yet mechanical characteristics. Bartelby poses no threat to the narrator, so in this way he is able to gain power and control over the narrator by slipping under the radar, especially so that he does not receive any form of punishment from the narrator. The narrator seems to touch on this concept when.