The way most people felt about the war at the beginning of this course was homogeneous; most did not "care" much about the war, and admitted that they probably won't give it the attention it deserves. The war, which seemingly never ends, makes it easy for people to forget that it is even going on. Therefore, most of us turned a blind eye to the current state of affairs in Iraq.
The lawyer in "Bartleby", on the other hand, has a different war to deal with. His issue is with Bartleby's idleness and enigmatic behavior. He doesn't know what to do with the situation, and tries the most common and simplistic solutions. When all of these ideas fail (such as firing Bartelby), the lawyer ends up moving his whole office, trying to "forget" about the whole thing.
Does this sound familiar? Bartleby is the war; the lawyer deals with the persistent and endless problem that Bartleby posed. The lawyer couldn't draw a conclusion on the matter, and ran away from the problem. This is figuratively parallel to our (the students) feelings and detachments from the Iraqi War. We are so perplexed by the situation that we just want to move away from it and forget about it. However, just as the lawyer doesn't fully abandon Bartleby, we students do not fully abandon the Iraqi War either. We acknowledge its presence and importance in the grand scheme of things.
Bartleby died at the end of the story. Hopefully, the Iraqi War does as well.
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