The Tombs
Popular name of New York City’s jail in Lower Manhattan, first the Egyptian Revival Halls of Justice of 1838. In Melville’s Bartleby, the Scrivener it is where Bartleby is jailed as a vagrant and dies.
At a glance
| Source | Author | Role | In one line |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street | Herman Melville | setting | Bartleby is jailed as a vagrant, faces the yard wall, refuses food and dies at its foot. |
Bartleby, the Scrivener: A Story of Wall-Street — Herman Melville (1853)
Source: Bartleby, the Scrivener - A Story of Wall-Street · Original · Readwise highlight
The same day I received the note I went to the Tombs, or to speak more properly, the Halls of Justice.
- Role: setting
- In the book: Removed from the building as a vagrant, Bartleby is taken to the Tombs, which the narrator calls “more properly, the Halls of Justice”. The narrator visits and finds him in the enclosed grass-plotted yard facing the high wall, refusing to speak and refusing the dinners of the grub-man, Mr. Cutlets. On a later visit he finds Bartleby dead, curled at the foot of the wall.
- Why it matters: It is the scene of Bartleby’s death and the story’s end; its massive Egyptian walls echo the dead walls outside his office window.