The Man of the Crowd by Edgar Allan Poe

THE STORY opened with the narrator sitting in a cafe somewhere in London. He observed the people going about their day. In his mind, he categorized them according to how they were dressed and how they behaved in the crowd. Out of nowhere, an old man of about sixty to seventy years old caught his attention. A great craving to know more about that man came upon him so he stood up from his chair and stalked the old man.

The story took us to where the old man went which was nowhere. Instead, he roamed the city, as if in a daze, he went to different shops neither touching nor buying anything. He spoke to no one. At one point, he turned around and retraced his steps back to the where he was first seen in the story and then he went on about the city again, turning at corners, without definite destination.

This continued on until the curious man gave up as yet another evening fell upon them. The story ended with a quote “er lasst sicht nicht lesen” which is translated to “it does not permit itself to be read”.

Page 215
Complete Stories and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe
(Published by Doubleday & Company, Inc.)

What I love about Poe’s writing style is how he is vivid with his characters and scenes. Though at times I feel overwhelmed with his superfluous words, as with the case of “The Fall of the House of Usher”. But mostly, his writing takes me there, right in the scene, engulfed in its surroundings. Like the passage below where he described the turn of the evening,

“but the rays of the gas-lamps, feeble at first in their struggle with the dying day, had now at length gained ascendancy and threw over every thing a fitful and garish lustre.”

I could just feel the velvet of the evening envelope me.

Another line that evoked feelings in me,

“The change of weather had an odd effect upon the crowd, the whole of which was at once put into new commotion, and overshadowed by a world of umbrellas”

In mind, I’m in a dark alley surrounded by people and their umbrellas. Digression, I’m not sure why, but all the umbrellas in my mind are color yellow.

So far, The Man of the Crowd is my favorite. It does not involve any gore killings or supernatural exhibitions. Instead, what I see here is the enigma of the mind. Or that unquenched craving of the soul that bears no name.