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Summary
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Man of the Crowd, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Dark Secrets
Curiosity, Obsession, and the Unknown
London, Crowds, and Urban Alienation
Summary
Analysis
The unnamed narrator briefly reflects on the idea of secrets and crimes that are too terrible to ever be revealed. He mentions a German book that “does not permit itself to be read,” comparing it to the dark secrets that die along with the people who keep them, never having told them to another living soul. He guesses that the true heart of human evil will never be fully revealed, simply because people are compelled to keep their most horrifying thoughts and deeds hidden deep within themselves.
The narrator’s opening thoughts set the stage for the story’s focus on dark and unspeakable secrets. They also engage the reader’s curiosity and establish the narrator as an inquisitive figure who is interested in things that he shouldn’t necessarily know about. Setting a mysterious and intriguing tone is the main purpose of this short speech; it lets the audience know what they’re in for, promising more questions than answers.
Active
Themes
Literary Devices
The narrator sits by the window in an unnamed coffee-house in London, as an autumn afternoon comes to an end. He notes his cheerful and inquisitive mood as he’s recently regained his strength of body and mind following a period of sickness. After entertaining himself by glancing at newspaper advertisements and the other patrons of the coffee-house, he turns his curious attention to the seemingly endless crowd of people walking down the busy street just outside the window. He begins by observing and thinking about the masses as a whole, but then he focuses on the more intricate details of the passing individuals, completely absorbed by his sudden interest in people-watching.
Here, the narrator’s curiosity immediately begins to take hold of him, beginning as little more than an idle interest in the people around him. His strange mood following his illness signals that whatever’s about to happen to him is going to be unusual, or at least it might seem that way in his heightened mental state. The narrator’s curiosity is his strongest defining trait, and it manifests itself early here, innocently enough for now.
Active
Themes
Literary Devices
The narrator spends quite a while examining the personal details of the people walking down the street, mentally separating them into groups based on their class, occupation, appearance, social status, and so on. Though he starts by considering groups of people, he soon begins to note the appearance, clothing, and mannerisms of the people of the crowd in great detail, inferring much information about their personalities and ways of life simply by observing them.
Active
Themes
Literary Devices
The narrator notices the “business-like demeanor” of those who are mainly concerned with just getting through the crowd, some even talking to themselves as if “feeling in solitude” amidst the throng. When other people in the crowd bump into them or block their way, they either ignore it and continue on their way when possible, or bow and smile to the other people in an absent sort of way, single-mindedly focused on whatever they’re thinking about. Their dress reveals they’re of the “decent” class, including noblemen, merchants, and attorneys. Ultimately, the narrator doesn’t find them very interesting.
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Next, the narrator observes members of the “gentry,” such as clerks, pick-pockets, and gamblers. The clerks dress sharply and have an “affectation of respectability,” while the narrator looks more unfavorably on the pick-pockets. He wonders how this class of people could ever be “mistaken for gentlemen,” and mentions that all great cities are “infested” with them. The gamblers wear a variety of outfits, but the narrator still spots them in the crowd easily, noticing their dim eyes and hushed voices when talking to others. All of these people are lumped into a vague middle class by their clothing quality and occupations, but the narrator regards most of them with wry scorn.
Active
Themes
Finally, lower down in his classification, the narrator observes peddlers, beggars, and “women of the town.” Everything in the manner of the peddlers seems humble and deferent, except for their flashing, shrewd, hawk-like eyes. Meanwhile, “professional” beggars scowl with resentment at other beggars more genuinely desperate than they are, and the sick search for “some lost hope” in the faces of the crowd. The women of the crowd include young girls returning from work and feeling uncomfortable around “ruffians,” and women who look beautiful on the surface but have an “interior filled with filth.” The narrator watches these and many other kinds of people pass by, his senses almost overwhelmed by the crowd’s mass of noisy activity.
As night begins to fall, the narrator spots one person in the crowd who defies the easy categorization that he’s been applying to everyone else. This person is an old man wearing a bizarre facial expression that completely bewilders the narrator. The expression seems to contain all sorts of conflicting emotions at once, from malice to merriment to triumph to terror and everything in between, all at the same time. The narrator compares the old man’s appearance to that of the devil himself. He’s surprised and deeply intrigued by the old man’s contradictory expression, and feels a sudden desire to know what kind of history or dark secret could possibly produce such an unusual countenance.
Consumed by his curiosity, the narrator immediately pulls on his overcoat and steps out into the street, beginning to follow the old man while being careful not to attract his attention. As he gets a closer look, he notices that the old man is very short, gaunt, and feeble-looking, and he wears ragged and dirty clothing that nonetheless seems to be made of a beautiful sort of fabric. Beneath a small opening in the old man’s clothing, the narrator thinks he spots a glinting object, which he guesses to be either a dagger or a diamond. These observations only make the narrator more eager to learn about this strange man, so he continues to follow him through the crowd as night, fog, and rain descend on London.
The narrator begins a long and confusing pursuit through the streets of London. For hours, he doggedly follows the strange old man through the main thoroughfare, down several side streets and alleys, and through various locations ranging from a busy bazaar to a thronging theater to the more squalid side of the city and “one of the palaces of the fiend, Gin.”
During this pursuit, the old man’s behavior changes occasionally, but it becomes no less bewildering. He passes in and out of his state of agitation throughout the night, completely ignoring the crowds of people around him, and never seeming to notice the narrator following him and watching his every move. The old man travels “without apparent aim,” wandering through the streets and alleys without giving any clear indication of either his past or his future.
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Themes
Eventually, the narrator and the old man reach the main thoroughfare where it all began, and the pursuit continues in the same way all through the following day. As the second night closes in, the narrator is too exhausted to carry on following his quarry. He finally steps right in front of the old man and stares him in the face directly, but the old man takes no notice and continues on his way, just as before.
Active
Themes
The narrator stops following, and remarks to himself that he can learn nothing of this old man or his dark secrets. He concludes that the man is “the type and the genius of deep crime” who “refuses to be alone” and “is the man of the crowd.” He guesses that the old man’s horrible crimes, whatever they are, can never be brought to light. The narrator once again mentions the German book that never allows itself to be read, considering it a blessing that there are some unmentionable secrets that will never be revealed.
