On Edgar Allen Poe's "The Man of the Crowd"

Edgar Allen Poe’s The Man of the Crowd is a unique short story about Poe observing the masses of people who pass by a coffeehouse in London. As Poe mentions, he has spent his afternoon looking over advertisements in the paper while smoking a cigar. While this sounds incredibly relaxing, Poe shifts his attention to the street where he notes the different characteristics of various pedestrians. I think it is interesting that most of the people he sees are both serious in nature and fixated on getting from one place to another. These people do not excite Poe’s attention, but he continues to people-watch nonetheless. He notes the differences between the junior clerks and upper clerks, which makes for an interesting sociological distinction. Apparently, the junior clerks “wore the cast-off graces of the gentry” while the upper clerks wore more fashionable, elegant and expensive items (682). To a degree, Poe’s description of various groups he observes is extremely superficial.

Poe judges these individuals who are walking in the masses by the clothing they wear and the demeanor by which they briefly display. When nighttime approaches, Poe suddenly slips out of his trance in describing the crowd and becomes fixated on one particular individual. The man, described as being approximately sixty-five years old revealed “a countenance which at once arrested and absorbed my whole attention, on account of absolute idiosyncrasy of its expression” (684). Poe becomes so obsessed with this man that he devotes his entire night and part of the following day tracking this man. Poe seems to be satisfied only when he is within sight of this man, yet, he does not disturb the man’s natural tendencies. What makes this man so peculiar is that he downright lost when he is not within a crowd. He searches all night for numerous crowds to be a part of and walks until his need is satisfied.

Though Poe follows this man around all night, he is unable to come to many conclusions about the fellow. Though he notes what the man wears and how the man acts, he never approaches the person he is seemingly obsessed with. The piece ends with Poe giving up on his pursuit of this mysterious man. Poe states that the man commits the deep crime of refusing to be alone. While some may believe that an inability of being alone could be some type of social deficiency, classifying this as a crime seems quite harsh. In fact, an argument can be made that Poe suffers from this same defect. This is to say, that when Poe became bored with reading the paper, he embeds himself in the lives of those who pass by the coffeehouse window. He becomes so possessed with the lives of others that he follows a man around all night, instead of going home alone.