Prison is considered an appalling place to be, but Bartleby thinks otherwise. “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” (27). Bartleby is aware of how the world is, how the world refuses to accept his individuality. During this scene, Melville described the prison as “the Egyptian character of the masonry weighed upon me with its gloom. But a soft imprisoned turf grew under foot. The heart of the eternal pyramids, it seemed, wherein, by some strange magic, through the clefts, grass-seed, dropped by birds, had sprung” (29). Melville chose to contrast the image of a prison to pyramids.