Paper Summary:

This paper discusses the poem "Crowds" by Charles Baudelaire about an idle man who roams through the Parisian crowd and while moving through the crowd, notices and ponders over everyone and everything. It analyzes the three main themes of the prose namely, individuality, egoism and conformity. It examines how the basic notion is that each human being like the character in the prose sees himself as a unique individual of society and how the qualities, which truly make a person an individual in its right meaning, are his sorrows, happiness, obstacles, triumphs and experiences.

From the Paper:

"It is this very concept of individualism, which enables the audience to discard Baudelaire's argument as a result of egoism. No matter how one sees himself above others or how distinguished, he eventually is the same as anyone else as far as his origination or orientation is concerned. All men possess some similar attributes and as a result are not completely unique from others. Even though they might think they are but in reality they are not and will eventually be described as humans, having the same human nature, which in some ways possesses the same qualities as others. Since each person recognizes himself as incomparable to others, to accept this notion may prove to be somewhat a matter of self-pride and egoism."

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