summary of the man of the crowd by edgar allan poe
The Man of the Crowd After an unnamed illness, the unnamed narrator sits in an unnamed coffee shop in London. Fascinated by the crowd outside the window, he considers how isolated people think they are, despite "the very denseness of the company around". He takes time to categorize the different types of people he sees. As evening falls, the narrator focuses on "a decrepit old man, some sixty-five or seventy years of age", whose face has a peculiar idiosyncrasy, and whose body "was short in stature, very thin, and apparently very feeble" wearing filthy, ragged clothes of a "beautiful texture". The narrator dashes out of the coffee shop to follow the man from afar. The man leads the narrator through bazaars and shops, buying nothing, and into a poorer part of the city, then back into "the heart of the mighty London". This chase lasts through the evening and into the next day. Finally, exhausted, the narrator stands in front of the man, who still does not notice him. The narrator concludes the man is "the type and genius of deep crime" due to his inscrutability and inability to leave the crowds of London.[2]
The Man He Killed The poem was written at the time of the second Boer War (1899-1902). The poem considers the irrational situation of war, and diminishing patriotic motives of the soldiers that meet one another on the battlefield. By giving his readers the perspective of an ordinary manâ€™s life and experience, Hardy asked broader questions about the purpose of war in general. Hardy's own class origins were visible in this poem; where his own parents were from the middle and lower class, so that even as a rich and successful novelist, he could put himself in the perspective of ordinary people. Such as where the man in poem ponders about the motives of war. Also during this time Hardy and his wife, Emma, did not approve of the South African War like many other liberals- it gave Hardy doubts about the British Empire. To him, it seemed like the Boers were only defending their homes and land against the English. Overall, it made him question the purpose of killing others for the sake of war.[5]