Thou Art the Man
Thou Art the Man
Thou Art the Man is a short story by Edgar Allen Poe, posthumously published in 1850. It is one of Poe's detective stories, like The Purloined Letter.
Plot Summary
In the town of Rattleborough, the wealthy Barnabas Shuttleworthy goes missing. His nephew and heir is accused of murdering him and is arrested. Soon after, Shuttleworthy's good friend Charles Goodfellow recieves a letter from a wine firm informing him that shortly before his disappearance, Mr. Shuttleworthy had ordered a case of "Chateau-Margaux of the antelope brand, violet seal," Goodfellow's favorite vintage, to be sent to him. Mr. Goodfellow arranges for a party to break open the new wine. But when the narrator (a denizen of Rattleborough and acquaintance of Shuttleworthy and Goodfellow) prys open the case, there is no wine. Instead is the decaying corpse of Mr. Shuttleworthy, who looks to Goodfellow, and somehow utters, "Thou art the man." The terrified Goodfellow confesses to killing Shuttleworthy, is immediately arrested for the murder, and the exonerated nephew set free. It turns out that the narrator had orchestrated this gruesome turn of events. Suspecting Goodfellow all along, the narrator discovered that Goodfellow had framed the nephew. He also managed to find Shuttleworthy's corpse on his own, and knowing that his efforts would not be effective without a confession, he forged the letter from the firm, and sent the "case of wine" himself to Goodfellow.
Title
The title of this story comes from 2 Samuel 2:17, where Nathan accuses [King David] of arranging for the death of [Uriah] in order to marry his wife [Bathsheba]. Nathan had used a parable of a rich man with a large flock of sheep stealing the only lamb of a poor man to feed his guest. David determined that such a man deserves to die for his greed, to which Nathan responded "Thou art the man".