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Poe's Man in the Crowd: Types of People Based on Appearance

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Poe's Man in the Crowd: Types of People Based on Appearance
Poe's Man in the Crowd: Types of People Based On Appearance

Throughout life, clothing and body language are often utilized as sources of emotional expression. These emotions can also be portrayed in literaray works and artisitic displays, such as those of Poe, Baudelaire, Manet, and Warhol. In Poe's "Man of the Crowd," there are several descriptions of different types of people based on their appearances, but one particular man is focused on by the narrator due to his unique appearance. Baudelaire's "The
Painter of Modern Life" emphasizes the emotional expressions of beauty and fashion expressed in art. Manet is an artist who paints scenes to his liking.
All of his works were done in his studio and set up the way that he wanted them.
He holds a particular focus on men and women and the relationship between them.
The positions and clothing that the men and women are set up in hold strong emotional implications about their feelings towards one another and the emotions involved in the social setting. The opening of "The Man of the Crowd," describes the emotions involved in untold secrets and the deepest of crimes; there are internal conflicts, struggles, anxieties, and agonous results due to the horror of the unsolvable crimes. The possibility of these crimes is introduced through the man of the crowd through his unseemingly unidentifiable expression The narrator describes his thoughts of this man as:

There arose confusedly and paradoxically within my mind, the ideas of vast mental power, of caution, of penuriousness, of avarice, of coolness, of malice, of blood-thirtstiness, of triumph, of merriment, of excessive terror, of intense
- of supreme despair. I felt singularly aroused, startled, fascinated. "How wild a history," I said to myself, "is written within that bosom!"

Although the narrator had never spoken to this man of the crowd, he was compelled to follow him based on his expression that had never been viewed by the narrator. He

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