- This is another one of those Melville stories without much of a plot.
- Still, it's got more of a point than "The Piazza". So that's something.
- A dude (hereafter referred to as "the dude" or "the narrator") is standing inside by his hearth listening to the thunder outside.
- Some other guy comes and knocks on the door.
- Dude 1 asks second guy if he'd like to stand by the hearth.
- No way, says dude two, and holds up a long rod (he's the lightning rod man of the title.)
- The lightning rod man explains that you're in danger of getting hit by lightning if you stand by the hearth.
- Dude 1 says, chill out man.
- The lightning rod man tells him he sells lightning rods, and that only lightning rods can protect you in a storm.
- Dude 1 finds out that the lightning guys rod was on a church that got zapped with lightning recently, and concludes that the rods aren't of much use anyway.
- (Scientific note: lightning rods actually do work; dude 1 is underselling them, though the lightning rod salesman is overselling them.
- Back to your scheduled Shmoop narration.)
- The narrator continues to razz the lightning rod salesman and suggest that he's a fool and a scammer, who travels in thunderstorms to scare people and get them to buy his rods.
- The lightning-rod guy is undeterred though, and tells the narrator not to ring the bell or close the shutters or do much of anything or he'll get zapped by lightning.
- Lightning-rod guy blathers on and says it's safest to be in wet clothes in a lightning storm (Scientific note: no.)
- He also says that in a storm he avoids just about everything, including other people.
- The narrator mocks him and points out that everybody dies sometime; who is this lightning-rod salesman to say he can control the heavens?
- The lightning-rod salesman gets cranky and attacks him with the rod.
- But our dude breaks the rod and sends lightning-rod guy packing.
- But people still use fear to sell junk, the narrator concludes pithily.
- That's the moral of the story, conveniently placed there at the end.