The Lightning-Rod Man cover art

The Lightning-Rod Man

Preview

£0.00 for first 30 days

Try for £0.00
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, celeb exclusives, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

The Lightning-Rod Man

By: Herman Melville
Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
Try for £0.00

£7.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically. See here for eligibility.

Buy Now for £3.99

Buy Now for £3.99

Confirm Purchase
Pay using card ending in
By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. Please see our Privacy Notice, Cookies Notice and Interest-based Ads Notice.
Cancel

About this listen

After spending the summer of 1853 in the Berkshire Mountains, where he supposedly had a real-life encounter with a lightning-rod salesman, Melville published "The Lightning-Rod Man". At the end of this short story, the lightning-rod salesman is exposed for the fraud that he is. However, that will not keep his successors from fanning out to the Middle West, where lightning storms abound and farmers are gullible.

On another level, the story can be interpreted as a confrontation between Good and Evil. Through description and diction, the narrator is understood as a follower of God, someone who believes in The Almighty watching over him. On the other hand, the lightning-rod man is seen as a negative character, someone who only has faith in the product he's peddling.

Public Domain (P)2010 Listen & Live Audio
Classics Fiction Short Stories
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

Listeners also enjoyed...

The Tell-Tale Heart cover art
Holy Terrors cover art
The Castle of the Carpathians cover art
New Hampshire cover art
The Mysterious Stranger cover art
Can Such Things Be? cover art
The Phantom Rickshaw cover art
Dagon cover art
The Princess and the Goblin cover art
The Silmarillion cover art
A Neighbour's Landmark cover art
Prester John cover art
The Three Impostors and Other Weird Tales cover art
Doug Bradley's Spinechillers Audio Books, Volume 1 cover art
Cue for Treason cover art
The Return of the Native cover art

What listeners say about The Lightning-Rod Man

Average customer ratings

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.