A master of Latin prose, Cicero’s writings influenced Enlightenment-era thinkers like John Locke and Montesquieu. He was a contemporary of Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. 43 B.C.E.) was a Roman statesman, lawyer, philosopher, and orator. Bartleby, the first occupier of Wall Street, is a frustrated man of our times.īartleby, the first occupier of Wall Street, is a frustrated man of our times.Ĭicero’s appearance in Bartleby supports the story’s overarching protest against the One Percent - a larger argument I make in a new introduction for the novella. Just like in the mid-19th century, economic injustice has sparked protests worldwide and the future of capitalism is tenuous. In Melville’s time there was Vanderbilt and Carnegie. Melville wrote the story during the Gilded Age, a time when inequality between the haves and have-nots stretched the fabric of society, much like it’s doing so today. Melville, who studied Cicero, was deliberate with his inclusion because he wanted to say something specific about American society and capitalism.īartleby, the Scrivener (1853), a masterpiece of short fiction, is about a copyist in a small Wall Street law firm who one day refuses to work anymore. So it’s no surprise that Cicero, the ancient Roman orator, has two cameos in Melville’s masterful novella Bartleby, the Scrivener. Suffice to say that the American bard knows precisely how and why to use imagery, if for nothing else than to challenge the generations of writers and critics dog-paddling in his wake. Merely uttering the title of his most famous work (you know the one) conjures boundless interpretations of the color white, to say nothing of religious, romantic, maniacal, and other symbolism and allegory - too many to count. Herman Melville is no stranger to symbolic writing. “The Empty Picture Frame” (1934) by Rene Magritte

Melville scrivener