"The Man of the Crowd" is a Short Story by Edgar Allan Poe penned in November 1840. It premiered simultaneously in the December 1840 issues of Atkinson's Casket and Burton's Gentleman's Magazine in anticipation of their merging into Graham's Magazine later that month. "The Man of the Crowd" was first published in book form when Poe included it in his Tales collection in 1845.
During the late 1830s, Poe had a high output of supernatural horror stories and "The Man of the Crowd" is regarded as among that line-up. It also has elements of Detective Fiction and may be considered a precursor to "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", which was first published in April 1841. "The Man of the Crowd" is thus a transitional hybrid of the two genres and the story actually has two distinct halves. For the first twelve paragraphs, the narrator sits alone deducing the identities and natures of the people passing by on the street. Hereafter, the narrator spots a striking wanderer and obsessively follows him for nearly 24 hours as the man, without loss of energy, only ever seeks out new crowds to join.
Seated at the window of the D— Coffee-House, part of the D—Hotel in London, the narrator is subject to an unusual sense of personal energy stemming from his recent recovery from a months-long illness. As the evening proceeds, he observes the people walking by and makes a game out of identifying their positions in life. The more into the night, the rougher the elements that make up the crowd until the narrator spots one wanderer whom he can't categorize except for the notion that he'd make an excellent visage for the devil. Intrigued, the narrator stalks the wanderer to see where he's headed. But for all the hours until the next evening that the narrator follows along, the wanderer doesn't go anywhere except where there are crowds. Once the workers have petered out of the streets, he heads for the late-night bazaar, then for the masses leaving the theaters, then for the outskirts where the ginshops are open until dawn, then back to downtown where the workers once more head out. The narrator gives up at this point, concluding that he'll learn nothing more and that the evil the wanderer hides is best left undisclosed.
There are many ways to interpret the wanderer as well as the narrator and the story's genre duality does nothing to make one more likely than the other. It might be that the wanderer is an eternal wanderer, cursed by an alluded-to crime. Or he is a psychic vampire that feeds on the energy of multiple people at once. He might be the embodiment of the city both in his apparent sole existence as crowd filler and as the quintessential holder of secrets. Rationally, the wanderer could be just an earthly crook in the midst of criminal dealings. It's also been proposed that the wanderer is a Doppelgänger to the narrator or that the narrator himself is the doppelganger. Because the wanderer's alluded-to crime and the narrator's sickness could have happened concurrently, the narrator may be the wanderer's guilt haunting him. Or, given that the narrator by his own admission is not in a right state of mind, it might be that the wanderer's refusal to go home and his need to be in a crowd is just his way of keeping himself safe from that creep that's stalking him.
Because "The Man of the Crowd" directly precedes "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" in the detective genre, its narrator may also retroactively be interpreted as being Dupin or his unnamed companion. In any case, the fact that the narrator is staying at a hotel suggests he's not a Londoner.
"The Man of the Crowd" has been adapted to comic form thrice. The first is a straight adaptation published in Psycho #23. The second was published in Creepy #70 and constitutes a rewrite to explicitly portray the wanderer as a psychic vampire. The third is also a straight adaptation published by Dark Horse Comics. The first feature film adaptation is O Homem das Multidões and three more short films exist. Of these, the 2008 adaptation mixes "The Man of the Crowd" with "The Cask of Amontillado".
"The Man of the Crowd" provides examples of the following tropes:
- Character Narrator: Not only is the story told from the perspective of its protagonist, for the most part without the protagonist there would be no story. Over half of "The Man of the Crowd" is nothing but his observations of the city's population as they go about their day. The other half could be an actual story, but just as likely the protagonist is attributing significance to what has none. Even if there is a story, however, the narrator comes no closer to its content than his own observations and he gives up before he receives answers.
- Conspicuous Trenchcoat: The wanderer is almost hidden away in a "closely-buttoned and evidently second-handed roquelaire," though a rent in the fabric allows the narrator a glimpse at a diamond and a dagger. A roquelaire is a type of cloak, so the description evokes the "cloak and dagger"-motif.
- Cue the Sun: The narrator chases the wanderer all throughout the night into the Londonian outskirts and when they return to downtown it is dawn and the area comes alive again with the citizens going about their business. Although the narrator continues to follow until evening falls, it is at dawn that he stops the detailed description of the pursuit and the mystery of the wanderer is effectively given up on.
- Epigraph: "The Man of the Crowd" opens with "Ce grand malheur, de ne pouvoir être seul," a quote ascribed to Jean de La Bruyère and found in The Characters. This isn't the exact line, but a modification of "Tout notre mal vient de ne pouvoir être seuls," which Poe earlier quoted in "Metzengerstein" as "vient de ne pouvoir être seuls." The paraphrase means as much as "Such a great misfortune, not to be able to be alone," while the original line translates to about "All of our ills come from our inability to be alone." The epigraph relates to the nature of the wanderer, who despairs whenever he's not part of a crowd and by the protagonist's reasoning therefore is a being of evil.
- Flying Dutchman: One possible interpretation for the wanderer is that he's an eternal wanderer. The prime argument for this is that the narrator follows him for nearly 24 hours and all the wanderer does is seek out new crowds to join when his previous ones disperse. He has no apparent home and he doesn't grow tired. As to how he would've become an eternal wanderer, the dagger and diamond the wanderer has hidden beneath his roquelaire might be related.
- A Foggy Day in London Town: Right when the narrator goes to follow the wanderer through London's streets, a thick humid fog sets in, which eventually makes way for heavy rain. All the same, the fog remains bad enough that the narrator opts to tie a handkerchief about his mouth.
- Greedy Jew: The people-watching narrator mentions the "Jew pedlars" he sees on the street, who have flashing "hawk eyes" that betray the humble facade they affect. The narrator ranks them among society's lesser people along street beggars, invalids, women, and drunkards.
- Hates Being Alone: The wanderer cannot stand to be alone and anything less than a crowd to disappear into makes him hesitant, despondent, anxious, and desperate. When on his own, he behaves as if his life is on the line, which the narrator in one instance alludes to when he notes that the wanderer "[gasps] as if for breath" when at last he finds another crowd to join. Also, despite being a feeble, scrawny man of around 70, the speed and dexterity with which he makes for areas where he reasonably may expect a crowd puts the narrator's own fitness to the test.
- Hidden in Plain Sight: Both the wanderer and the narrator use the crowd to go about unnoticed. The purpose for the wanderer is ambiguous, while for the narrator the crowd hide him from the wanderer.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: There are many peculiarities about the wanderer. These may be signs of the supernatural, but just as likely his oddness is perfectly explainable. There is only one peculiarity that is in favor of the supernatural. After following the wanderer for nearly 24 hours, the narrator is exhausted and ceases his pursuit. The wanderer, however, is none the worse for wear and keeps going.
- Obviously Evil: The wanderer is a "decrepid old man, some sixty-five or seventy years of age," dressed in a closely-buttoned roquelaire, that puts to the narrator's mind the devil himself. His appearance also convinces the narrator of an extensively dark history.
- Shout-Out: Poe makes a lot of references to other works of fiction, art, and history.
- "The Man of the Crowd" opens and closes with mention of the Hortulus Animæ, which Poe refers to as a book that doesn't permit itself to be read. The Hortulus Animæ is a prayer book that was very popular in the 16th Century. The title translates to "Little Garden of the Soul" and as there's no text in the book itself that is out of the ordinary, it appears that "doesn't permit itself to be read" refers to the soul by means of the title.
- Poe was a fan of Charles Dickens and two paragraphs resemble texts by Dickens. The opening paragraph about the horrible secrets people take to their graves appears to be inspired by "The Drunkard's Death" and the paragraph about the gin palace comes from "Gin-Shops". Both pieces are part of the Sketches by Boz series.
- While describing the narrator's elated mental state, Poe paraphrases from The Iliad with "αχλυξ η πριυ επῆευ", which roughly means "the mist that clouded before."
- In the original prints, Poe mentions the "vivid yet candid reason of Combe," referring to George Combe of phrenology fame. Later prints replace Combe with Leibnitz, referring to the polymath Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz. The comparison to Leibnitz has the benefit of widening the scope of all the narrator takes in during his post-illness sense of clarity, but Combe is a superior fit to match what the narrator does in deducing what kind of people make up the crowd.
- Poe mentions "the mad and flimsy rhetoric of Gorgias." Gorgias was a rhetorical innovator and something of a word wizard. What might be relevant to the story is his On Non-Existence, in which he makes the argument that reality is, if exists, ungraspable, not unlike the wanderer.
- Poe compares beautiful women in their prime with "the statue in Lucian, with the surface of Parian marble, and the interior filled with filth." This is a reference to the Aphrodite of Knidos, one of the first life-sized representations of the nude female form in Greek history and a predecessor to all other nude Aphrodite/Venus statues. The statue is famously described in Lucian's Erotes. The filth-filled interior refers to the story of a man who used the statue as a sex toy, which left a permanent stain on the statue's leg.
- Poe describes the early night where darkness has fully set in yet the gaslamps have reached their full strength as "dark yet splendid—as that ebony to which has been likened the style of Tertullian." This is a description taken from Paul Clifford, which in turn has been taken from the Menagiana. Tertullian himself was a Christian author who greatly influenced the religion's development. He was also, likely, black, which might have something to do with why his writing style is compared to ebony.
- The narrator describes the wanderer as having the kind of face that Retzsch would have preferred over his own depiction of the fiend. Friedrich August Moritz Retzsch was a graphic artist known in particular for his illustrations to Faust.
- Spell My Name with a Blank: The narrator is staying in the D—— Hotel in London. It is the only occasion on which this type of obscuring occurs in the text.
- Stalker without a Crush: The second half of "The Man of the Crowd" is a near-24 hour pursuit of the wanderer by the narrator. The narrator is fascinated by the wanderer's unsettling and contrary appearance and eventually his behavior. He seeks to discover the wanderer's identity and motivations, but finds only secrecy that is beyond him to crack open.
- Title Drop: In the final lines, the narrator gives up his pursuit of the wanderer and draws a conclusion about his identity based on what is all he'll ever learn of him. He believes him to be "the type and the genius of deep crime" and deems him "the man of the crowd."
- True Sight: The narrator's post-illness clarity may be interpreted as him being still woozy but also as him having actual unusual clarity for the time being. This clarity allows him to spot the anomaly that is the wanderer, who is otherwise hidden within the anonymity of the city crowds.
- Unreliable Narrator: Precious little is revealed about the narrator himself. It follows that he's male, he's educated, and he does not belong to any of the categories of people he observes in the streets. More emphasis is given to the fact that he's only just recovered from a months-long illness and now finds himself in a state of high energy where "merely to breathe [is] enjoyment" and he "derive[s] positive pleasure even from many of the legitimate sources of pain". Later, he isn't bothered by the rain because "the lurking of an old fever in [his] system [renders] the moisture somewhat too dangerously pleasant." His obsession with the wanderer is therefore not something that necessarily comes from a healthy mind and it's furthermore possible to read the wanderer's ongoing search for crowds as a means to evade the stalking narrator.
- Wham Shot: The narrator regularly makes assertions that the wanderer doesn't notice him and that this is due to the narrator's own skills and the occasional luck. Within eight paragraphs, five lines relate to this belief. In the final paragraph, the narrator reaches the end of his rope when after following the wanderer for nearly 24 hours he is barely closer to knowing anything about him. Marking the sixth line, the narrator throws caution to the wind and stands still in front of the wanderer. The wanderer does not regard him and walks past, as people in crowds just do.
