The Man Who Was Poe

The Man Who Was Poe Summary | Plot Summary

The plot of The Man Who Was Poe mirrors the tradition of detective stories, which Edgar Allan Poe established with his groundbreaking works. The story takes place during Poe's lifetime, specifically during the winter of 1848, and includes Edgar Allan Poe as one of its major characters. The story begins as a locked-room mystery. A young boy named Edmund Brimmer returns to his hotel room one night to find his sister has mysteriously vanished from the locked room. There is no sign of forced entry and no other entry point to the room besides the window. The room is on the top floor of a tall tenement building. Poor Edmund is left alone in a seedy part of town in Providence, Rhode Island. To make matters worse, he hails from England, and this is his first time visiting the foreign land of America. Edmund and Sis came to Providence a month ago with their Aunt Pru on a desperate quest to find their missing mother. Two days before the story opens, Aunt Pru leaves the room to meet a man who claims to have information about her missing twin sister, the children's mother. Aunt Pru never returns from that meeting. Edmund and Sis are left all alone to fend for their selves in a city that their aunt has warned them is dangerous.

When Edmund goes out for food and returns to find his sister missing, he is beside himself. The eleven-year-old boy does not know whom to trust. He finds the locals indifferent to his plight, and eventually he must place his trust in the only man who agrees to help him, the mysterious Mr. Dupin. Dupin is actually Edgar Allan Poe, who has just arrived in Providence and wishes to remain incognito for reasons of his own. When he bumps into the desperate boy, Poe is fascinated by the similarities he perceives between himself and young Edmund. Poe, too, lost his mother at a young age, and his late beloved wife was known by the name Sis, just like Edmund's sister. Poe introduces himself as the detective he created for his story, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," a Frenchman by the name of Auguste Dupin. Poe enjoys playing detective, and at first he relishes pretending to be Dupin. Poe extracts as much information as he can from Edmund and then sets about solving the kidnapping. Along the way, the kidnapping becomes a bank robbery and finally a murder, all perpetrated by the same two scoundrels, Rachett and Peterson. Poe, as Dupin, solves the crime and points the finger at Rachett, Edmund's evil stepfather.

Poe is a tormented soul, though. Suffering from grief over his wife's death, he has fallen into a spiral of depression and drink. His consumption of alcohol increases his moodiness and selfishness, and he quickly loses interest in helping Edmund find Sis. Poe decides he would rather write about Edmund's life story than help the boy. Additionally, Poe is sidetracked by his half-hearted wooing of Mrs. Helen Whitman, a prominent society widow. Poe speaks of love to Mrs. Whitman, but his inner thoughts focus more on the financial benefits of marriage than on any positive attributes of her character. Unable to forget his lost Sis, Poe cruelly tells Edmund to stop believing his sister might be alive. All stories end in death, as far as Poe is concerned. In the end, Edmund must find the courage to defy Poe's gloomy outlook and search for Sis on his own. Shamed by the boy's tenacity, Poe returns to help him in the end. Yet after Sis is safely rescued and Edmund has been reunited with his mother, he cannot help but wonder if Poe went along to help save Sis, or if he had only wished to witness her potential death.