The Business Man

"The Business Man" is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe about a businessman boasting of his accomplishments. The story questions the concept of a self-made man. This short story, written by Poe, looks through the perspective of a businessman. The narrator of this story, Peter Proffit, considers himself an upstanding businessman who is a stickler for order. He curses intellectual types, whom he calls 'geniuses' because he believes that they are wasting their time in their respective fields. He holds them in great disdain because they never want to follow rules blindly, and instead analyze things and read into rules too deeply. It is for these reasons that the narrator believes that they cannot be turned into businessmen.