- description
- # Narrator's Visit to the Tombs and Interaction with Bartleby
## Overview
This is a segment extracted from the short story [Bartleby, The Scrivener](arke:01KG8AJ8SS2R5YVRHT1BCDZZNP) by Herman Melville. It describes the narrator's visit to "The Tombs" (Halls of Justice) where Bartleby is confined, and their brief interaction. The segment spans lines 1403-1435 of the source file [bartleby_the_scrivener.txt](arke:01KG89J1CRGPEZ66W67EZPAMPE).
## Context
This segment is part of the [Melville Complete Works](arke:01KG89HMDZKNY753EZE1CJ8HZW) collection. It follows the segment [Bartleby's Removal and Initial Confinement](arke:01KG8AJQ3GJFMMAJSMS6ETGDR7), which details Bartleby's silent acquiescence to being taken to the Tombs. This segment is followed by [Narrator's Arrangement with the Grub-man](arke:01KG8AJQ3GD6JNXQ8Q3MJFKHSZ), which describes the narrator's interaction with a "grub-man" who provides food to prisoners.
## Contents
The segment describes the narrator's visit to the Tombs, his conversation with an officer, and his subsequent meeting with Bartleby in the prison yard. The narrator finds Bartleby standing alone, facing a wall. He attempts to comfort Bartleby, assuring him that he was not the one who brought him there and that the place is not so bad, pointing out the sky and the grass. Bartleby curtly replies, "I know where I am," and refuses to say more, ending the interaction. The segment highlights Bartleby's continued passive resistance and isolation, even in confinement.
- description_generated_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:10.043Z
- description_model
- gemini-2.5-flash-lite
- description_title
- Narrator's Visit to the Tombs and Interaction with Bartleby
- end_line
- 1435
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:47:37.562Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 1403
- text
- The same day I received the note I went to the Tombs, or to speak more
properly, the Halls of Justice. Seeking the right officer, I stated the
purpose of my call, and was informed that the individual I described
was indeed within. I then assured the functionary that Bartleby was a
perfectly honest man, and greatly to be compassionated, however
unaccountably eccentric. I narrated all I knew, and closed by
suggesting the idea of letting him remain in as indulgent confinement
as possible till something less harsh might be done—though indeed I
hardly knew what. At all events, if nothing else could be decided upon,
the alms-house must receive him. I then begged to have an interview.
Being under no disgraceful charge, and quite serene and harmless in all
his ways, they had permitted him freely to wander about the prison, and
especially in the inclosed grass-platted yard thereof. And so I found
him there, standing all alone in the quietest of the yards, his face
towards a high wall, while all around, from the narrow slits of the
jail windows, I thought I saw peering out upon him the eyes of
murderers and thieves.
“Bartleby!”
“I know you,” he said, without looking round,—“and I want nothing to
say to you.”
“It was not I that brought you here, Bartleby,” said I, keenly pained
at his implied suspicion. “And to you, this should not be so vile a
place. Nothing reproachful attaches to you by being here. And see, it
is not so sad a place as one might think. Look, there is the sky, and
here is the grass.”
“I know where I am,” he replied, but would say nothing more, and so I
left him.
- title
- Narrator's Visit to the Tombs and Interaction with Bartleby