The Lightning-Rod Man

A man sits at his hearth as thunder shakes the mountains. Then—a knock. A stranger steps in, soaked and shivering, armed not with warmth or need, but with polished copper and an urgent offer. He doesn't sell comfort. He sells protection—against the very sky.
The Lightning-Rod Man is Herman Melville at his most compact and cunning. This sharply drawn tale uses one room, one storm, and two voices to stage a quiet war between reason and fear, independence and submission, belief and the glittering promise of safety. It's a sales pitch wrapped in a sermon, disguised as a fable.
Melville's dry wit and subtle irony crackle beneath the thunder. The visitor's obsession with bolts and conductors, with calculated distances and copper rods, is more than technical fuss—it's a worldview, a business model, a quiet tyranny cloaked in science. The narrator's resistance is equally symbolic: a choice to remain unshielded, to risk being struck, rather than surrender to fear disguised as logic.
Short, strange, and simmering with tension, this story feels oddly modern. It speaks to every moment we're asked to buy into anxiety, to protect ourselves from what might happen, if only we pay the right price. Whether you read it as allegory, satire, or subtle horror, The Lightning-Rod Man still hums with electric relevance.