Turning a Narrative Into a Film

Man of the Crowd

By Edgar Allan Poe (1840)

The story significantly depicts not only the preoccupation of the 17th hundred London issues and a trend brought by the progressive industrialization of time, but speaks so much relevance in our modern time as well. The epigraph which sums up the very essence of the story explains the dynamic of a human being too busy to mingle with the crowd for fear of facing the haunting memory of a disturbed self, the lonely person, the conscience and the unsettling disturbances deep within. The epigraph "Such a great misfortune, not to be able to be alone" is rich in context within the story, but also a rich source of reflection of a human and societal struggle. I firmly believe in the relevance of the story not only in its significance to the theme and era when this story was written, but for me, it is a narrative worth producing to a film. It is a glaring representation of the fact that many, if not most of us, are really "unknown" and fear the "unknown" but would completely hide such insignificance through anonymity in the bustling noise of everyday life, in the crowd, in the company of people. In our society, reading signs of times, as well as reading people based on the knowledge of social sciences made most of us smugly confident that we can just fit people in a category sciences constructed, only to know and discover that at certain point in time, the individual differences and uniqueness of every human being can bring conflict to what we already conceived as stereotype; which then losses our confidence of what we used to know as "certain," "typical" and "familiar." Then we realized the depth and scope of human nature that cannot be simply categorized into black and white, clean and dirty, royal and beggar, right and wrong. As always, each person is uniquely design and complex in its nature, as the main character in the story, the narrator, discovered. In the word of Mazurek:

"So we have a story in which noting is to be divulged but the un-divulged, in which the hidden secret that is pursued is finally revealed as that which cannot be revealed. Not surprisingly, the narrator's discovery of ambiguity is itself ambiguous; the tale, which begins and ends with statement about unfathomable mystery, turns in upon itself" (12:25-28)

Character. It is a story about an unnamed narrator who started his feat by categorizing people in the crowd while he was sitting near the window in an unnamed coffee shop, where he is watching outside the crowd in London Street, after having battled from an unnamed illness. The story begins when the narrator, in his fascination at how people are alone and isolated despite the crowd they belong, decided to categorize each person in the crowd. As the day ended, the narrator's focus shifted to a "decrepit old man" who he surmised to be sixty five to seventy years old whom he could not categorize at all. The man has a "peculiar idiosyncrasy" and he proceeded to describe the short stature, feebleness and other physical characteristic of the old man "wearing filthy, ragged clothes of a beautiful texture." He then decided to follow the old man through countless crowded places such as the bazaars and shops, buying nothing, aiming to get nothing, until he went deeper into the poorest area of the city and back again to the crowded street which is the "heart of the mighty London." The narrator followed the old man until the next day, when he finally concluded that the man does not fit to any category he constructed. He finally thought that the man is a "type and genius of deep crime" due to some characteristics he noted: unsettling, disturbed, with the hidden dagger inside his clothes, and his inability to leave the crowd of London, perhaps for fear of being hunted by the crime he made in the past; or perhaps, by being alone, he will be sorted out or identified by authorities or people that knew of his crime. The narrator categorized the old man as "inscrutable" a misfit to his category, and therefore, not common, not typical, but rather a deviant. The conflict begun when the narrator who was confident of his ability to read every person in the crowd according to external sign, failed to identify a certain old man, a contradiction beyond the narrator's range of typology. It is in this curiosity and the obsession to solve the mystery surrounding the personality of the old man that led the narrator to explore the other side, in fact the deepest side of a happy London landscape, only to find out that-although he succeeded in following the old man-he still failed to "fit" or "suit" him into any category he knew. The author disclosed the disparity between the narrator and the object of his obsession: the secure, confident man of his time of the former character, and the deviant, unknown and feeble type of the latter character. The author also reveals that the narrator and the old man who became the object of his inquiry, is one and the same person . It signifies the dual personality of an individual in that kind of society. The narrator and the narrated is one and the same person with interesting character or traits. The narrator himself pursued his own "unknown" side in vain. He could not, at the end of the story, solve the problem of the uncategorized persona he was pursuing. As the narration goes in Edgar Allan Poe's short story:

"And here, long, amid the moment increasing confusion, did I persist in my pursuit of the stranger. But, as usual, he walked to and from, and during the day did not pass from out of the turmoil of that street. And, as the shades of the second evening came on, I grew wearied unto death, and stopping fully in front of the wanderer, gazed at him steadfastly in the face. He noticed me not, but resumed his solemn walk, while I, ceasing to follow, remained absorbed in contemplation. This old man, is the type and the genius of deep crime. He refuses to be alone. He is a man of the crowd. It will be in vain to follow; for I shall learn no more of him, nor of his deeds. The worse heart of the world is a grosser book than the Hortulus Animae, and perhaps it is but one of the great mercies of God that 'er last sich nict lessn" (translated as "it does not permit itself to be read").

Theme

The short story deals with the paradox of duality: the crowd which can be easily read, and the individual mysteries that lurks in the crowd. It talked about the predictability of characters, as well as the unpredictability of some aspect in a character. The story showed the two sides of personality and in general, the duality of life: the readable and the unreadable, the typical and the uncategorized; merriment of the city and the loneliness of the suburb; the grandiosity and affluence of the mainland and the misery and poverty of the periphery areas or suburb. The story suggests that in the predictability of things, there is always a phenomena for a one percent or more unpredictability, hence, there is always room for mystery, an instance in anyone's life which cannot be fathomed, cannot be interpreted and thus, it "does not permit to be read" and to be left as it is. Human mystery, especially deep loneliness and fear can be veiled by hiding not in the closet or isolated place, but also in a crowd. It is the paradox in the story represented by the old man, a man who is so afraid to be alone; fear hunted him in his solitude that he needs to be in the crowd for the rest of his life.

Setting

Historically, the short story was written in 1840, when London was is in its peak of population boom. The population in London grew steadily so that century- rich men had to build estates and towns to accommodate the growing needs of the populace. The city's phenomenal growth was attributed to the flux of migrants seeking for employment, political refugees, and merchants. Establishments in the town became the favorite spot for all business transactions, as well as various Vanity fairs, theatrical attractions and other amusement venues. This is where the narrator of the story took view of the city's crowd while enjoying his cup of coffee and newspaper. While the city is growing, so does goods and products including wine, cigarettes, and other sources of vices, such as gambling resulting to incidence of crime .The city had two faces: while it is progressive, it also showed poverty at its worst; while the city is populated, overcrowded, with lots of possible sources for distractions, it also painted loneliness unimaginable. Poverty, misery, loneliness and fear of the unknown, which can be veiled through mixing or hiding in the crowd is depicted in this short story. As a social structure, London produced a large number of workers, especially clerical workers; clerks were an obvious occupation of the time, and the obvious aspect of the metropolitan economy. Although a large part of the population are working class, there are also nobles and rich merchant plying the social circles of upper social class London, but they are outnumbered by the poorest class in the city. In Psychology, Pseudoscience's of physiognomy and phrenology-which pertains to the ability to read the character of people in a crowd- influenced the author's perspectives in classifying people in the story. The popularity of written text appearing sporadically in the modern urban landscape of that time influenced the writer in the way he mused at things and developed his literary representations: a person is so much like a written text that can be read; and the written text can be likened to an image that can be categorized, and vice versa . In the context of social and cultural milieu, the author presented the irony of his own culture, a social world based on increased fragmentation, class division, and human isolation .

Symbolism

The old man, whom the narrator pursued in the story, is a symbol of so many things: first, he can be the other aspect of personality of the narrator, a personality that he himself needs to understand, pursued, seek and discover. The old man in the story never noticed the narrator stalking him; it is a symbol of unconscious processes at work. While the old man in the story tried to mingle in the crowd and displayed uneasiness in the company of himself alone, the narrator himself is almost always alone but amused himself by observing the crowd. The old man can also be a symbol of a dysfunctional society that never finds comfort in solitary endeavors: he needs a lot of crowd keeping him busy to be able to function well. The man is also a symbol of a psychological disorder which might have been unnamed at that time, the Monophobia, an acute fear of being alone and having to cope without a specific person or perhaps any person, in close proximity . A symbolic illness of the society itself, the individual, and perhaps the narrator himself who mentioned he just had recovered from an unnamed illness. This can be clearly outlined in the movie, which will help the viewer get a glimpse of a dysfunction which is not only in an individual level, but societal as well. The words "night" the "gas lights" the "fog" and the "darkness" symbolized the mental state of the author which is surreal and vague and extraordinarily sensitive to imagination. The walk that the narrator took symbolizes his mental processes during his quest for answers, where he was drawn to places he never would have imagined he ventured into, to seek for the answer he longed to know, but without any luck, he had to go back again from where he began his journey concluding that it was a waste of time, for it remains a mystery whatever he sought for. The symbolism of journey and the quest can be highlighted in the movie as the quest for the inner unconscious, the self, and it's idiosyncrasies that are sometimes manifested but could not be explained even with the tools that science and human may employ. The readers, in the end, are left as well with feeling of frustration for an unsolved mystery. It is Romanticism at its best, the sensation of the mystery of nature, the human nature, specifically. Some authors find the story a delusional portrayal of the author himself, to be read as the "deluded romanticizing of the tipsy narrator, who perversely attributes a Romantic significance to an old drunk." The diamond and dagger, among the many symbolisms which stood vividly in the short story, are subject for many interpretations. The diamond is interpreted as the gem of a personality, the genius in every human being, while the dagger connotes the danger, the crime that all personality has. It's the dual nature of every person that will make the symbol significant in the making of the movie. The same reference can be made to tattered old clothes that the old man is wearing in the story, which is full of filth, but is made up of fine linen, again a contradictory symbol that will make the theme in the movie consistently speak of the dual nature of the human being.

Contemporary Innovation

The story can be made into a movie in contemporary society, specifically a psychological, suspense thriller in cyberspace or metaphysics. The symbolism and the theme of the story still apply up to this era. The search for a clue, the hopes of finding the answer about the depth and width of the unknown processes of entirety of human being is universal. The failure to get an answer despite the confidence and certainty of scientific inquiry is also relevant to our modern society. The thesis of the short story is very much relevant in the contemporary society: our ignorance of the depth of human nature sometimes led us to dismiss the unknown into something which we already constructed, categorized and stereotyped. The turn and twist of the events in the story, the duality of personalities and symbols as well as the failure to fully explain the phenomena of human complexities can be innovated into a psychological thriller and metaphysical suspense-related movies of our contemporary society. Futuristic science discovery to interpret human being according to behavior, action and facial expression can be the modern interpretation of the narrator in the story. It may involve not one narrator, but a powerful institution which dominates humanity and has predetermined everyone's destiny by interpretation of each movement and physical energy. However, a special entity, which could be either the alter ego of the powerful narrator, posed danger to that scientific certainty by the mere refusal to be recognized, categorized and stereotyped. The story may revolve around this conflict, leading to a tragic ending: The failure of science to recognize the depth and power of certain type or evolving human being. A mixture of science, psychology and metaphysical fiction can be combined to re-invent the story into contemporary movie. In the words of Auster: "It is, indeed, with cyberspace that the full potential of Poe's 'The Man of the Crowd' was to be unleashed."

Argument Summation

The short story "The Man of the Crowd" is interestingly a suspense-psychological and metaphysical narrative worthy to be adapted to a movie having a unique, complex, yet enticing subject about human nature and its mystery. It will give the viewer or audience the experience of being the narrator, so distance yet so close to the subject it narrated, and would allow the audience to relate to the subject of the narrator. The narrative itself is full of effective techniques which urge the viewer to focus on the subject it wanted to follow with a sense of immediacy; it will bring into fore the mix emotion that the viewer may feel at the moment: superiority and confidence, curiosity and the tendency to seek for answers; failure and frustration, and at the same time, resignation to the mystery unsolved, or the feeling of being hunted by what was not revealed in the story or the plot. The disillusion of discovery makes this story an interesting suspense movie. At the end of the story, the narrator finds his way back to the exact place where the story begins. The twenty-four hour quest to pursue an identity similar but also a contrast to that of the narrator is like eternity, only to find out that the narrator never really left, or the audience never really took off, but only the wandering mind which creates the illusion of the pursuit. The movie will forever be open to interpretation, subject for an ending that only the viewer can supply or create. The creative process of the unsolved mystery is an effective technique to hold the viewer looking for more, a sequel, part two, series, and the like, which will be advantageous to the investor of this movie. In the advent of box office hits in movie installments such as that of Harry Potter, Lord of the Ring, Twilight Saga, "The Man of the Crowd" movie adaptation could surely gain popularity among avid viewers and ensure box office hit.

Biography of Edgar Allan Poe