Continuing our study of the "anti-Transcendentalists" that were contemporaries of Emerson and Thoreau, we today analyzed Melville's famous story, "Bartleby the Scrivener " in the context of the social issues of the Gilded Age. Joshua identified the protagonist and antagonist as well as the general conflict and from there we engaged in a discussion of what each might represent. We first identified descriptions of Bartleby as "pallid and forlorn " and discussed the tomb imagery of the narrator's law office in downtown Manhattan. We further noted how Bartleby is ultimately arrested and taken to the prison in Manhattan ,known as the tombs. as well as Bartleby's prior history as a clerk in the Dead Letter Office, With all of this tomb imagery ,we derived a theme of a civilized privileged society killing the soul and humanity of its less fortunate members. I addressed the embedded notion of existentialism in Melville more than 100 years prior to the existentialist movement of the 20th Century. We last discussed how to organize an essay in preparation for tomorrow 's essay test.