The Man Who

Titles beginning with “The Man Who…” have become a prevalent trope in storytelling over the past century and a half. Compiling 243 titles from 1869 to 2023 across literature, theater, and film, this collection lays bare the unchecked ambition, curious pursuits, and dubious power of the man at the center of it all. Always active and in control, he is the architect of his own destiny. Even the titles indicating his failure still carry the same expectation: to be knowledgeable, powerful, exceptional. This collection exposes society’s obsession with masculinity in all its contradictory, unattainable glory, and the isolation of The Man Who is granted the stage all to himself.