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 2, Chapters 16-18Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2
Chapter 16 Summary: “The Man Who was Poe”
Having found Sis’s button, Edmund and Dupin head back to Fox Point. Frustrated that Dupin never answers his questions, Edmund yells at Dupin in the street. Dupin finally tells Edmund he believed Aunty, Sis, and his mother were all murdered, but the daguerreotype and his visions today make him think that one of them is still alive. He now knows that the woman he saw in the courthouse and the cemetery was not a ghost; it was either Aunty Pru or Edmund’s mother.
Edmund relays the information about Fortnoy from Captain Elias, which contradicts Dupin’s suspicions. Dupin is convinced he “[works] better with drink” (142), and finally admits that his name is Edgar Allan Poe. He explains that he “’[is]...the man who was Poe. Now [he is] Dupin’” (142). Edmund brings Dupin to the saloon in hopes that he will share more information about the woman he saw earlier that day.
Edmund notices a bill on the wall of the saloon requesting information about his mother, Mrs. G. Rachett. Dupin deduces Aunty Pru must have posted it. Edmund tells Dupin he witnessed Catherine fetch Mr. Rachett for Helen’s house earlier this afternoon, which helps Dupin conclude that Rachett uses the alias Mr. Arnold. Edmund further explains he overheard Mrs. Powers talking to Mr. Arnold about Poe and Helen earlier this morning. Excited, Dupin receives confirmation from the bartender that Throck took on the case of finding Mrs. Rachett.
As the pair rush to Edmund’s room, Edmund witnesses a man aim a pistol at Dupin, but Edmund intervenes, saving him. The man escapes, but Edmund can see that it is Rachett. In the room, Dupin frantically searches for the newspaper the meat pie was wrapped in and points out the notices posted by Peterson and Arnold. Edmund shows Dupin the strange piece of paper he found at Helen’s, and Dupin recognizes it as the code he created for his story “The Gold Bug.” Dupin deciphers the message: “’Meet me at the hotel. I have moved girl and gold. Must leave. Sunrise at six A.M.’” (149). After taking ten minutes to consider all the clues, Dupin claims that he now understands everything.
Chapter 17 Summary: “No Detail Too Small”
Dupin lays all the objects he found on the table then excitedly explains what he believes happened: Using the money he stole from Edmund’s mother, Rachett created a new rich persona for himself in Providence as William Arnold. The hasty message Pru received from her sister indicates that Edmund’s mother got into trouble after arriving in Providence to search for Rachett. In Providence with the children, Pru posted a reward through the Providence Bank for help in finding her sister. Throck took on the case, motivated by the reward. Meanwhile, Rachett saw the posting and placed his own ad as Mr. Arnold as a test of his alias. Rachett must have seen Peterson’s ad offering his discreet services as an aspiring investigator and, realizing they live in the same place, approached Peterson with his plan to get rid of his wife. Peterson knew about the arriving gold, so they also created a plan to rob the bank.
The pair lured Pru away and kept both sisters captive, but Peterson drowned Pru and put her sister’s dress on the body to trick the authors. Edmund’s mother escaped the night of the robbery and has been wandering town in search of her children. The men waited for Edmund to leave the room for food so that they could kidnap Sis and use her to steal the gold through the vault’s small air shaft. After the robbery, they hid Sis in the mausoleum. The moment Rachett saw Edmund in the clothing store, his likeness to Sis made him doubt which of the sisters Peterson murdered. After stealing the portrait of the sisters from Edmund’s room, Rachett decided he and Peterson need to leave town. He wrote a coded message to Peterson, which Edmund found at Helen’s house. While Rachett was at the tea party, Peterson followed Edmund to the docks to kidnap him too.
When Dupin alluded to the “puzzle” of the coat at the tea party, Rachett believed Poe figured out their plan, so he waited by the tenement to shoot him. Dupin suspects the man Edmund saw in the cemetery was Peterson, and that the dropped prayer book must have been from the ghostly woman seeking refuge in the church. Dupin suddenly corrects Edmund, telling him: “I’m no longer Auguste Dupin. I am the man who is Edgar—Allan—Poe” (161). He is so preoccupied with writing his version of this story that he refuses to help Edmund search for his mother. In turn, Edmund refuses to buy Poe liquor and leaves the room. Frustrated, Dupin leaves to buy the liquor himself.
Chapter 18 Summary: “The Woman in the Church”
Edmund runs to the Unitarian Church, where he finds his mother moaning by the pulpit. They cradle each other while she tells him her version of events. Everything Poe deduced was true: Rachett kept her prisoner for months in an attempt to avoid scandal because his only priority was being seen as a proper gentleman. Peterson, she explains, is the violent one of the two; he urged Rachett to kill both sisters. When Edmund’s mother escaped, she found out about her sister’s inquest from Captain Elias and later followed Peterson to the mausoleum, certain that her children must be hidden there. After running into Poe, she sought refuge in the church. Edmund tells her that Sis was used to help the men rob the bank and assures his mother that he will find her.
Part 2, Chapters 16-18 Analysis
As the novel approaches its climax, Dupin finally unravels the mystery completely. The nonsensical note Edmund found earlier is finally deciphered, and everything Dupin suspected to have happened is true. In his explanation to Edmund, Dupin ties up some loose ends: Throck, motivated by greed, took on the case to find Edmund’s mother for the reward money. It was Aunty Pru who tricked Rachett and Peterson to save her sister, changing into her dress to confuse them—a detail Edmund immediately noticed when he first saw her body. Mrs. Rachett’s imprisonment and subsequent escape are both significant aspects of the novel’s Gothic style. In her Encyclopedia of Gothic Fiction, Snodgrass explains that “confinement, particularly of an innocent female character, is a major motif in Gothic lore.”
Having solved the mystery as Dupin, Poe is ready to return to his identity, and this shift in identities is also common to Gothic writing. Through alternate identities, disguises, or concealment, Snodgrass explains, “Gothic characters obtain both good and bad ends,” and these identity shifts “[beguile] readers through the blurring of character traits, places, and motives.” As Dupin, Poe was able to find the answers to solve the mystery, but in doing so, he caused Edmund emotional harm. Though Dupin announces that he is now Poe again, the lines between the two personas remain blurred. As Poe, his only motive now is to write his story.
His new material remains the focus of his obsessive nature, which reaches an extreme now that they are so close to saving Edmund’s mother and sister. He is ambivalent toward their lives, as their fictional counterparts are the only individual that hold meaning for him (161). Even when Edmund reminds him that this “isn’t a story,” (161), Poe’s obsession with his work demonstrates that, as Snodgrass points out, “compelling, haunting actions frequently motivate faulty logic and precipitate disastrous ends.” Poe effectively tries to will Edmund’s mother and sister’s deaths for the sake of a tragic ending, even though he reminded Edmund early on that “there is a difference between what happens and what we would like to have happened” (23).
When Edmund determinedly finds his mother without Poe’s help, she confirms that Rachett created this elaborate and violent plot purely for the sake of saving his image. Granting his wife a divorce would jeopardize his reputation with Mrs. Powers and cost him a marriage to Helen, so he decides to kill his wife. The dramatic and violent extremes Rachett is willing to go to for “the world to think him a proper gentleman” (165) is the exact antithesis to gentlemanly behavior and emphasizes just how meaningful class distinctions were in the Victorian Era.
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