44 pages • 1 hour read
AviThe Man Who Was Poe
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 1989A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 1, Chapters 7-10 Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1
Chapter 7 Summary: “Judgment of Murder”
Edmund runs to Mrs. Whitman’s house and explains his task to the servant, Catherine, who agrees to let him in if he promises not to make anything dirty. Mrs. Whitman does not immediately recognize Mr. Dupin’s name, but after a moment she realizes who he is. She was unaware Dupin was in Providence, and Edmund reminds her that he delivered a letter to her late last night. She expresses concern about Dupin’s drinking, explaining to Edmund that Dupin is “a genius” and “the most passionate, the most romantic of men” (63). She tells him not to speak about this letter to anyone and sends him off with Catherine to get some food from the kitchen.
At the courthouse, Dupin wonders if Aunty’s “beauty had made her dead” or vice versa (65). He notices that no one seems to care about her inquest hearing, other than one spectator paying particularly close attention. Fortnoy explains in his testimony that he finished his watchman shift aboard The Lady Liberty and saw the woman in the water. Dupin sees a vision of Aunty before falling asleep. The judge rules Aunty’s death a “willful murder,” but the perpetrator remains unknown. A court officer wakes Dupin up once everyone else is gone, and he experiences “a sense of inescapable death” (67).
Chapter 8 Summary: “A Perfect Tomb”
Left alone in the kitchen, Edmund becomes anxious and decides to find Mrs. Whitman to say goodbye. From one room he hears two voices speaking urgently: a woman admits to a man, Mr. Arnold, that she intercepted Dupin’s note last night. Together they decide to “put off” Helen from seeing Mr. Poe, because the woman believes Poe is “totally unsuitable for her” and she should marry Mr. Arnold instead (70). Arnold agrees to expose Poe as an indecent, irresponsible drunk in front of the guests are invited to the house this afternoon.
Edmund has no idea who they are talking about but finds a scrap of paper with a strange code on the floor of the room once they leave. Catherine finds him and brings him to Mrs. Whitman, who again asks about Dupin’s drinking. She also asks Edmund why he calls him Dupin, which confuses Edmund as he knows him by no other name.
Helen sends Edmund off with a message for Dupin: Dupin is to meet her that afternoon at the cemetery behind the house alone. She also tells Edmund to be cautious around Catherine because she works for her mother, Mrs. Powers.
Outside the courthouse, Dupin is shaken by the confirmation of Aunty’s murder and the vision of her ghost. He knows that drinking clouds his judgment and confuses him, so “he [puts] his hand to his heart and [swears] that he [will] not drink again” (70). On his way back to the cafe, Dupin notices the Providence Bank and realizes that the night of the murder coincided with the night of the bank robbery. At the bank, he convinces employees that he is a private investigator with the Lowell Insurance company sent to investigate the robbery. Mr. Peterson, a young clerk, takes him to the vault.
Peterson explains that the gold arrived from California a week ago in the middle of the night. This was meant to be a secret, but Mr. Poley, the head of accounting, is “as open as his ledger,” so the clerks all knew about it (75). Peterson cleaned the vault this morning and found only a white button, matching the one Edmund found in the tenement. Dupin enters the dark vault, where he becomes nauseated and unsteady. He finds a piece of string on the floor and pockets it. He also notices an air shaft in the ceiling. Peterson doubts it was possible for the thieves to fit through, given how small the opening is. He further explains that the builder of the vault installed an air shaft for fear of getting trapped and suffocating. Hearing this story, Dupin faints.
Chapter 9 Summary: “News of Sis”
Eager for clarification from Mr. Dupin, Edmund returns to the cafe, but the waiter informs him that Dupin left immediately after Edmund did. The waiter returns Dupin’s notebook to Edmund, and Edmund flips through it, noticing how frequently the word death appears. He discovers the notes Dupin has made about his life and determines: “There [is] something very wrong with Mr. Dupin” (80). Edmund briefly considers seeking help from Throck but decides Dupin is still the only one suited to the task of finding Sis.
Meanwhile, Dupin wakes up in the vault of the bank. Peterson escorts him outside and prepares to help Dupin home. Mr. Poley passes on an urgent message for Peterson left by Mr. Rachett, which makes Peterson look “stricken.” Peterson confesses to Dupin that he aspires to be an investigator and finds detective mysteries like those by Poe to be inspirational. Dupin tells Peterson his name is Edward Grey and takes Peterson’s calling card before he leaves. Mr. Throck follows Dupin to a saloon while another man follows Peterson, who does not return to the bank.
Thinking Dupin might be waiting for him in the tenement, Edmund rushes home, only to find the room upturned and everything in disarray. As he cleans the room, Edmund realizes that a portrait of his mother and Aunty was stolen. He momentarily feels hopeless but soon sets out to find Dupin. Drunk again, Dupin remembers he wanted to buy Edmund a coat. At the clothing store, the salesperson explains that earlier this morning, a customer named Mr. Rachett ordered a coat and suddenly left the store after “a begging boy” came in. Meanwhile, Edmund runs back and forth between the room and the cafe, anxiously waiting for Dupin to reappear. When he finally spots him strolling back from the store an hour later, he is incredulous that Dupin does not care about abandoning him. Unperturbed, Dupin tells Edmund he has news regarding Sis.
Chapter 10 Summary: “The One Who Murdered Her”
They return to the cafe where Dupin orders some whiskey. Edmund relays the message from Helen back to him, which excites Dupin. He claims he knows why Sis was kidnapped but refuses to tell Edmund why. He also refuses to tell Edmund any more about his personal life, other than that he is in Providence for business “in a manner of speaking” (89). He expresses his love for Helen and asks Edmund if he advises him to marry her. Edmund, upset by Dupin’s demonstrated disregard for him, admits that he read his notes. Dupin explains that he is “a creator of the future,” and that death is all-consuming (90). This overwhelms Edmund, and Dupin angrily threatens to stop helping him, insisting, “’Soon we shall have a solution. But it shall be my solution in my time’” (91).
As they return to Edmund’s room, he remembers to tell Dupin about the theft. The door was not forced open, so Dupin deduces that the thief must have used Aunty’s key. Dupin prioritizes getting himself ready for his meeting with Helen, which greatly frustrates Edmund. He is torn between abandoning Dupin and submitting to him for his help. Finally, Edmund tells Dupin the truth about his stepfather. After his biological father was lost at sea, Edmund’s mother remarried a man he never met named Mr. Rachett, who stole her money and abandoned their family. Edmund’s mother’s motive for coming to America was to find Rachett, divorce him, and get her money back.
Excited by this new information, Dupin remembers that Mr. Rachett was the customer at the clothing store. He describes the similarities he finds between his life and Edmund’s and instructs the boy to speak to Captain Elias on the docks to find out more information about The Lady Liberty. Dupin suspects that Fortnoy murdered Aunty.
Part 1, Chapters 7-10 Analysis
Avi continues to develop the novel’s Gothic mood in the remaining chapters of Part 1. Dupin’s visions of Aunty’s ghost—who, we later learn, is actually Edmund’s mother—heighten the presence of the supernatural. Dupin’s “sense of inescapable death” (67) exaggerates the desperate and doomed energy of the novel, and the recurring motif of being followed further adds tension and a sense of uneasiness. One of the most quintessential Gothic elements of this section is the bank vault: Dupin immediately feels unwell when he enters it, underscoring a sense of claustrophobia. In Mary Ellen Snodgrass’ Encyclopedia of Gothic Literature, she explains, “Close quarters contribute to stories of helplessness and horror of impending doom from some unseen menace.” (Snodgrass, Mary Ellen. Encyclopedia of Gothic Literature. New York: Facts on File. 2005.) Snodgrass adds that locked chambers are “the standard Gothic setting for the ‘perfect crime,’” an idea Avi borrows for both Sis’ disappearance and the stolen gold.
The stolen gold—and even Sis’s kidnapping—had the potential to be the perfect crime, but Peterson is too confident and cavalier in his meeting with Dupin. Between the string Dupin finds in the vault, the button Peterson shows him, the suggestion that only a child could fit through the air shaft, the calling card linking him to Rachett, and the “instructions” he found in Poe’s story “The Gold Bug,” Dupin finds a slew of helpful clues by visiting the bank. Dupin also notes that Peterson’s hair is “so blond as to be almost white” (75)—a detail that suggests that Fortnoy is a red herring. The mysterious code Edmund finds on the floor of Mrs. Powers’ home is meaningless to him at the time, though he later finds out this was a code stolen from “The Gold Bug,” the very story Peterson considers his instruction manual.
The most significant reveal of this section is that Rachett is Edmund’s greedy, malicious stepfather who Dupin connects as the startled man from the clothing store and the man who sent a concerning note to Peterson. The malicious stepfather is another coincidental parallel between Edmund and Dupin’s life, which only further encourages Dupin to ensure Sis’s death.
Dupin continues to believe that he is “a creator of the future” (80), underscoring his narcissism and the power he thinks his writing holds. Snodgrass explains that in gothic novels “obsessions precipitate twisted hopes,” which is why Dupin is so intent on Sis dying. Despite this illogical, selfish, and macabre desire, Dupin continues to prove he can be a resourceful sharp thinker who gets answers: He lies his way into the bank, which provides him with considerable clues, and thinks quickly on his feet to keep his identity a secret from Peterson. He is not too self-absorbed to see that his drinking affects his judgment and relationships, but the fact that he begins drinking hours after swearing to himself he would stop underscores that his addiction is not a mere choice but a genuine illness.
Dupin’s drinking results in his unfavorable reputation with Mrs. Powers, Helen’s mother. She considers him an indecent drunk, unworthy of her upper-class daughter. The language around Poe’s/Dupin’s struggle with alcoholism is one of moral weakness, not one of mental health and a desire to help him heal. Even Helen, who considers him to be a “genius” and a romantic man, questions whether she can trust a man who drinks. These moral qualities are bound with social class and status, and it does not help Poe’s image that he is a poor writer struggling for money. Despite his fame, his lack of wealth and mental health battles take precedent and negatively affect the way others perceive him, indicative of the ingrained social hierarchies of the Victorian Era. Ironically, Mrs. Powers believes Mr. Arnold—Rachett’s alias—is a more suitable match for Helen, not knowing that he is a thief, kidnapper, and murderer.
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