The
speed of the chase is often what pulls us to the edge of our seat, but winding
walks of diminishing speed can be just as intriguing. To illustrate pace in
such a way that the reader can actually feel the change is a difficult task. In
“Man of the Crowd” Edgar Allan Poe uses quickening and dizzying descriptions of
thoroughfares to emulate the narrator’s emotions creating a pace felt by the
reader. This sense of pace is only constrained by Poe’s obvious use of linear
time from the second paragraph onward. The modernity of the tale can be seen
through the narrators reading of the newspaper, which also sets the tale to be
read chronologically, however Poe’s use of the epigraph and the detailed third
person explanation of the book that cannot be read force a cyclical form to the
overall tale. Throughout the tale the narrator’s descriptions alternate between
focus on what is being seen and what is being done, so that during short
periods in which pace is at a lull the reader is engaged in the more important
aspects of the tale and can recover from the often dizzying chase.
In
the beginning of the story the narrator is convalescing in a hotel in London
and has been lounging in the parlor seated near the window. He remarks on the
scene unfolding outside, “This latter is one of the principle thoroughfares of
the city, and had been very much crowded during the whole day. But, as the
darkness came on, the throng momently increased; and, by the time the lamps
were well lighted, two dense and continuous tides of population were rushing
past the door.”(102) In this passage Poe uses the increasing speed of the crowd
in front of the hotel to illustrate the narrators growing interest in the
scene. As the, “throng momently increased,” the narrator is finished with his
newspaper, beginning to look around and by the time the lamps are lit he is,
“filled… with a delicious novelty of emotion,” and cannot turn away from the
window. The syntax in the first sentence is smooth, a single comma creating a
soft pause right in the middle. The second sentence is broken up by several
commas and a semicolon, each strategically placed, so that the short pauses
between segments create a slow and steady rhythm like the beating of a heart.
After, “increased; and,” the phrases become longer, but Poe continues to
illustrate the speeding traffic by switching to a nearly iambic meter. This not
only describes the speeding of traffic, but also represents the quickening of
the narrators interest in the scene.
Poe’s
narrator is constantly struggling to keep up with, we could go as far as to say
hungering for, this chase. However at one point the stranger, “walked more
slowly and with less object than before – more hesitatingly,” and still the
narrator struggles to keep track of the chase as the stranger, “crossed and
re-crossed the way repeatedly without apparent aim; and the press was still so
thick, that, at every such movement, I was obliged to follow him closely. The
street was a narrow and long one, and his course lay within it for nearly an
hour”(106). Though the speed of the chase has slowed the narrator is forced to
follow closely so as not to lose the stranger. However, following closer arises
a sense of urgency in not getting caught. Poe creates this sense of urgency by
breaking from conventional syntax, illustrating the narrator’s engagement in
the chase and compelling the reader to feel the tension without the narrator
outright claiming its presence. They begin again to wander through the city and
are shortly thereafter brought, “to a large and busy bazaar, with localities of
which the stranger appeared well acquainted, and where his original demeanor
again became apparent, as he forced his way to and fro, without aim, among the
host of buyers and sellers.” Again the actual pace is slow, but urgency is
maintained by syntax and the actions of the stranger, which force the
narrator’s and thereby the readers’ attentions. Not before long the stranger, “hurried
into the street, looked anxiously around him for an instant, and then ran with incredible
swiftness through many crooked and people-less lanes, until we emerged once
more upon the great thoroughfare whence we had started…”(107) In these passages
Poe explains the narrator’s trouble in following the stranger, constantly
changing pace, crossing “to and fro” and simultaneously using meter and syntax
so the reader and narrator feel as one.
Throughout
the tale no description is as dizzying as the description of the stranger
getting caught up a crowd exiting a large theater. The narrator is, “at a loss
to comprehend the waywardness,” of the stranger’s excitement in the throng:
As
he proceeded, the company grew more scattered, and his old uneasiness and
vacillations were resumed. For some time he followed closely a part of some ten
or twelve roisterers; but from this number one by one dropped off, until three
only remained together, in a narrow and gloomy lane little frequented. The
stranger paused, and, for a moment, seemed lost in thought, then, with every
mark of agitation, pursued rapidly a route which brought us to the verge of the
city, amid regions very different from those we had hitherto traversed.(107-108)
In the first half of
this description we see the pace moving steadily, but slow as the stranger
becomes, “lost in thought,” then suddenly take off again as the stranger makes
for more crowded avenues. Again we see Poe utilize syntax and iambs to generate
pace and at the end of this description he uses the very clever phrase,
“hitherto traversed,” which literally means until
now traveled across but the use of those two words keep within the meter
while adding a sense of extensive strenuous hiking to the description.
During
the course of the tale, linear time is one of the few things keeping the story
grounded. In the second paragraph the narrator is reading a newspaper and from
the third paragraph onward the lighting of lamps, sunrise, and shadows
illustrate the changing hours. Chronology of events cannot be argued here
because the narrator and stranger are moving simultaneously through a 24-hour
period. This connects to Anderson’s explanation of a nation moving
calendrically through time. In reading “Man of the Crowd” Poe’s extraordinary
use of language forcing the reader to feel and identify with the narrator
coupled with the use of linear time join the reader, narrator and stranger together
as a community sharing in the experience of the chase through London.
In
this sense Poe could be viewed as a pre-modernist writer. His extraordinary use
of language, breaking from conventional syntax to emulate the narrators emotion
so that the reader becomes part of the story by empathizing with the narrator,
was nearly a century before we began to see poetry breaking free from
conventional form.
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