Week 9 Project Action Plan: Theme in Bartleby, the Scrivener

For my project action plan, I’m going to do a draft of my project since I am discussing a theme that has been constant in my life and throughout the story of Bartleby, the Scrivener: “Being too Nice Can Hurt You." I need to pull out lines from the text to support my thesis. I will also be rereading the story so that I can make sure I am using strong facts to support my argument and make sure I am making the connection between my life and the narrator of the text.

                                                                              DRAFT

“Being too Nice Can Hurt You”

Growing up my parents would constantly warn me about being too nice. I presume it was because they saw my niceness as a flaw. My response would end with the same question, “how can being too nice hurt you?” With all the cruelty in the world we need all the kindness we can get. There is nothing wrong with being nice, it cost us nothing but being too nice could reveal something entirely differently and could cost us much. Unlike the narrator in Bartleby, The Scrivener, I learned that my being too nice was rooted in my inability to deal with confrontation. Being too nice is not beneficial for whether you are on the receiving or giving end. 

Growing up, my mother would get frustrated easily over the smallest thing, so I learned at an early age how to avoid conflict at all cost. Being nice and agreeable made things easier. This was a philosophy I lived by until my early thirties. The narrator too shared my philosophy, “I am a man who, from his youth upwards, has been filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best. Hence, though I belong to a profession proverbially energetic and nervous, even to turbulence, at times, yet nothing of that sort have I ever suffered to invade my peace. The author and I both avoided confirmation which meant that it carried into our professional life, as well as our personal.

I was an escrow officer for seven years, when I was promoted to branch manager of a company called Alliance Title. I was not scared to manage the office because I presumed the duties would not be too different from what I was already doing. The only difference would be that my co-workers were now my subordinates. I felt guilty for being promoted, not to mention, for now having to enforce certain policies. I had a co-worker, who I was just starting to develop a friendship with, constantly came in late. I would joke about it, hoping she would get the hint and start to come in on time. When that did not work, I went so far to tell her that other people had a problem with her coming in late, so she needed change. I must admit, because I allowed months to pass before addressing the issue, she did not take it well. So instead of being direct with her, I offered that we change her arrival time, so she would no longer be late. I did not know how to confront her without our peaceful work relationship being disrupted. My husband and others told me I was too nice and that she was taking advantage of me. Yet, I continued to make excuses for her like the narrator did when dealing with Bartleby after he refused to do the work he was hired to do, “with any other man I should have flown outright into a dreadful passion, scorned all further words, and thrust him ignominiously from my presence. But there was something about Bartleby that not only strangely disarmed me, but in a wonderful manner touched and disconcerted me. I began to reason with him” (303). Bartleby was recently hired and had no relationship with the narrator, yet he was incapable as a manager to first write him up with a warning, after the second reoccurrence of non-compliance fire him, and after refusing to leave, fire him.