Conformity and rebellion in social behavior

Conformity and Rebellion in Works by Amy Tan, Martin Luther King Jr., Herman Melville, and Shirley Jackson

The dilemma of conformity vs. rebellion, to do something that is expected, or "has always been done," or to rebel against expectation or convention, is common in both life and literature. Three short stories, by Amy Tan; Herman Melville, and Shirley Jackson, and the essay "Letter from Birmingham Jail" by Martin Luther King Jr., express conflict between conformity and rebellion. I will analyze Tan's "Two Kinds"; King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail"; Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener," and Jackson's "The Lottery," in that order, in terms of their themes of conformity vs. rebellion.

In Amy Tan's story "Two Kinds" (424-32) Jing-mei's Chinese mother wishes for her to conform to her own high standards of persistence and achievement in music, though Jing-mei lacks motivation. Her mother: "believed you could be anything you wanted to be in America" (424). If Jing-mei is "Not the best" it is "Because you not trying'" (426). Jing-mei's mother decides, since anything is possible in America, her daughter will become a child prodigy. Seeing a Chinese girl playing piano on the Ed Sullivan Show, she determines that Jing-mei will become a piano prodigy.

Jing-mei is initially enthusiastic about piano lessons, but her zeal vanishes once she learns playing piano is hard work. Soon she begins taking advantage of her piano teacher's deafness; as long as she appears to play correctly, Old Chong will not know the difference (427). Jing mei's mother brags: "If we ask Jing-mei wash dish, she hear nothing but music. It's like you can't stop this natural talent" (428). But in her first rebellious impulse, Jing-mei "was determined to put a stop to her foolish pride." When her first piano recital arrives, Jing-mei has not practiced, plays terribly, and humiliates her mother. She resolves never to play again. But when her practice time comes the next day, her mother forces her to the piano, as if nothing at all happened yesterday. Jing-mei rebels: "You want me to be someone that I'm not . . . I'll never be the kind of daughter you want me to be" (430). Her mother's answer is: "Only two kinds of daughters . . . obedient and those who follow their own mind! Only one kind of daughter can live in this house. Obedient daughter!" (Tan). The essence of Jing-mei's rebellion is that her mother is trying to make her into something she is not. In the end Jing-mei does eventually play piano again, as an adult, but on her own terms.

Rebellion may be not only personal, like Jing-mei's, but societal, as within Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Letter from Birmingham Jail" (634-47). King writes while imprisoned in the Birmingham, Alabama jail in 1963 for leading a civil rights protest seeking equal rights for African-Americans. King responds in his letter to a statement by other Baptist clergymen that King's activities are "unwise and untimely" (634). His peers have asked King to "seek negotiation" and give "the new city government time to act" (636): allow the status quo (of unequal rights for blacks in Birmingham) to change slowly, on its own terms, if at all. However, as King states, a different kind of action is needed; those ways have not worked. "We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights" (637) says King; "We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed."

King quotes from many sources, biblical, secular, ancient and modern, citing other rebellions against unjust laws. Quoting St. Augustine, he states: "an unjust law is not law at all" (638). Thus King implies, the necessity of his rebellion, even if he breaks the law: "A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law . . . is out of harmony with the moral law . . . segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality." Moreover, "We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was 'legal' . . . (639). As a Baptist minister with a moral obligation to uphold the laws of the land, King in this letter articulates the moral, ethical, and need to deliberately break the law for the greater good. The letter suggests that the non-violent civil rebellion in which he is engaged, even if it means breaking present unjust laws, is necessary to establish a more just society.

In Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener" (334-60), Bartleby, hired by a Wall Street lawyer to copy documents, soon refuses to do any work. After Bartleby's death, his boss learns that before coming to him, Bartleby was "a subordinate clerk in the Dead Letter Office" (360). Perhaps copying was but a slight improvement, if that. Bartleby works out at first, but one day, told to check a paper, he says, "I would prefer not to" (340). This is his first rebellion, reasons unclear. His boss is confounded. Eventually the office moves; Bartleby, refusing to work, obstructs their progress. Even after abandoning Bartleby, though, his ex-boss takes an odd, even sympathetic interest in him. He himself is "a man who, from his youth upwards, has been filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best (334). The boss's attitude is perhaps a passive-aggressive rebellion of his own against the competitiveness, even in 1853, of his work. Returning to his old office, he asks if Bartleby might "prefer" a clerkship, bartender job, or job entertaining "some young gentleman." Bartleby prefers "not to make any change at all" (357).

When Bartleby is finally removed from the office and hauled off "to the Tombs as a vagrant" (358) his ex-boss tries to keep him alive with good food; but with nothing to either live for or rebel against, Bartleby dies. Bartleby's is the vaguest rebellion described; it seems all at once about work, society, and life. Reaction of others to Bartleby's behavior prove that rebellion, however justified or unjustified, cannot be static: others will simply move around the rebel, or, if that fails, remove him.