Heinrich von Kleist’s The Earthquake in Chile, a short story that wins him his first fame as a writer, depicts vividly the catastrophic ending of a mass movement, wherein all normal human relations collapse. This study focuses upon the whys and wherefores of this tragedy, comparing it with The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind written by the French social psychologist Gustave Le Bon, “the Banality of Evil” written by the German thinker Hannah Arendt’s and The True Believer wirtten by the American political philosopher Eric Hoffer. The tragedy of The Earthquake in Chile is essentially a typical case of the crowd’s “Banality of Evil” foregrounded with theocracy as its setting, instigated by an oldest canon, materialized and consolidated by fanatics and men of action during a mass movement that starts with a thanksgiving mass and culminates in ruthless homicide.