The Murders in the Rue

Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe

Mayra Jimenez
Keila Bravo
Sumary and plot
Edgar Allan Poe was Born January 19, 1809, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. American short-
story writer, poet, critic, and editor Edgar Allan Poe's tales of mystery and horror initiated
the modern detective story, and the atmosphere in his tales of horror is unrivaled in
American fiction. His The Raven (1845) numbers among the best-known poems in national
literature. With his short stories and poems, Edgar Allan Poe captured the imagination and
interest of readers around the world. His creative talents led to the beginning of different
literary genres, earning him the nickname "Father of the Detective Story" among other
distinctions. His life, however, has become a bit of mystery itself. And the lines between fact
and fiction have been blurred substantially since his death.
Poe was overcome by grief after the death of his beloved Virginia in 1847. While he
continued to work, he suffered from poor health and struggled financially. His final days
remain somewhat of a mystery. He left Richmond on September 27, 1849, and was
supposedly on his way to Philadelphia. On October 3, Poe was found in Baltimore in great
distress. He was taken to Washington College Hospital where he died on October 7. His last
words were "Lord, help my poor soul."

At the time, it was said that Poe died of "congestion of the brain." But his actual cause of
death has been the subject of endless speculation. Some experts believe that alcoholism led
to his demise while others offer up alternative theories. Rabies, epilepsy, carbon monoxide
poisoning are just some of the conditions thought to have led to the great writer's death.
 Time and place of publication
THE MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE published in 1841 in Philadelphia literary
journal Graham's Magazine and then in Poe's own 1845 short story collection
Tales of Mystery and the Imagination, is one of the first detective stories, ever.
The whole idea of the detective was still new at this point. The first detective
agency in the world was founded in Paris in 1817 by all-around adventurer
and awesome guy Franois Vidocq, just 24 years before Poe published his
story. In fact, many people claim that the character of Dupin himself is based
on Vidocq's diaries.
As a writer of fiction, Poe took the process of using clues to figure out the
identity of a criminal and used it in creating what he called "tales of
ratiocination" (i.e., stories of deduction, in which there's a mystery, and it's
the job of the protagonist to look at all the evidence and reason his way to the
answer). In Poe's Dupin stories, it's not just the main man who is trying to
work out who the culprit is; it's also us, the readers. Anything in the story, no
matter how minor, could be evidence of whodunit, and we're supposed to use
our knowledge of human nature to figure out what the answer has to be.
(Although, we have to warn you right now that the murderer in "The Murders
in the Rue Morgue" is not someone we ever would have guessed.) "The
Murders in the Rue Morgue" is a story, sure, but it's also a challenge, not just
for the hero, but also for the reader.

By the way, Poe wrote two more Dupin stories, "The Mystery of Marie Rogt"
(1842) and "The Purloined Letter" (1844). Just in case you can't get enough.
 Characters
MONSIEUR C. AUGUSTE DUPIN. We're not knocking on Poe's genius by admitting that
Dupin isn't fully fleshed out as a character. After all, he's not really meant to be a
rounded character. He's most notable for the role he plays in "The Murders in the Rue
Morgue," for taking the many clues presented during the course of the story and
assembling them into a whole. Remember, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" is a new
kind of story, less interested in depth of character than in engaging the reader in logic
games. (For more on this, see "In a Nutshell"). In other words, "The Murders in the Rue
Morgue" is like a database of evidence the three silver spoons, the twenty or thirty
blood-smeared grey hairs, the windows locked from the inside and Dupin is like the
search engine that picks out what we need to know when we can't figure it out for
ourselves. The thing about search engines is, they're not exactly social we can't
remember the last time we had a conversation with Google and Dupin's no
exception.
THE NARRATOR. The narrator seems to be a fairly empty character. We don't know the
guy's name or where he comes from (although we do know he's not a native of Paris).
In fact is the narrator really a person at all? Think about it: he appears to spend all of
his time with Dupin, and his sole task in this fictional world seems to be to catalogue
everything Dupin says and does, and to express amazement at Dupin's genius. He's
like Dupin's personal cheering section, like "Brave" Sir Robin's annoying minstrel guy in
Monty Python and the Holy Grail, but without the attitude.In effect, the narrator and
Dupin seem like two halves of the same person, with Dupin doing the talking and the
narrator, the listening and recording. Consider their relationship: the two men meet
because they both want the same book; they share a house in Paris; they spend all
day and all night in one another's company; they enjoy playing the same game of
observation (which Dupin is good at and the narrator isn't); they fill in each other's
 Characters
THE SAILOR. This guy isn't a full-fledged character either. We think he's
worth including here, though, because he's the only person in the "The
Murders in the Rue Morgue" besides Dupin and the narrator who gets to
speak his own lines. Even the witnesses only get their testimony reported
in the newspaper they don't even get complete sentences.
THE PREFECT OF POLICE. We're just given a few lines to this guy because
he doesn't have a name or even a single line of dialogue in the story.
What's interesting about him is that he's a foil, or point of contrast, to
Dupin. Still, if the last line in whole story is spent being mean to the
Prefect, he must be important somehow. The Prefect of Police (read: chief
of police) seems to be some kind of friend of Dupin's, because he gets
Dupin in to see the crime scene. But he also seems to resent Dupin's
holier-than-thou, uppity attitude, telling Dupin at the end that it's good for
people to mind their own business.
THE OURANG-OUTANG. What's the ape all about? Why spend an entire
story detecting the activities of an animal that can't be held accountable
for its actions? We're not sure if there's an easy answer to this question,
but one idea we had is that the text of "The Murders in the Rue Morgue"
seems to be preoccupied with the division between creativity and
analysis. However, it bypasses another important psychological split
between the rational and emotional minds and the division between the
brain and the body. The Ourang-Outang (remember, that's Poe's old
 Setting
Paris, the nineteenth century
As we talk about in "What's Up with the Title?," the first detective agency in the world
was founded in Paris by a man Poe admires enough to the guy a shout-out in "The
Murders in the Rue Morgue": Franois Vidocq. So setting this story in Paris gives a clear
lineage from Vidocq, first real detective, to Dupin, first fake detective.
But here's something that grabbed our attention. Poe probably never actually visited
Paris. Nevertheless, in a short story where the narrator won't even tell us when the tale's
taking place (18? What?), it's striking that it'sreally specificaboutwhereeverything's
happening. Think about it: Dupin and the narrator meet at a library on the Rue
Montmartre (remember, "rue" = "street" in French). (Seeherefor more information on
this section of Paris, famous for its artist communities in the 19th and 20th centuries.)
The place Dupin and the narrator share is a "time-eaten and grotesque mansion" in an
unfashionable and out-of-the-way part of the Faubourg St. Germain (an old-fashioned but
still relatively aristocratic part of the Left Bank in Paris). And the fictional Rue Morgue is
placed in a real section of Paris, the Quartier St. Roch (source). So, what's going on? How
come Poe is being so precise about the setting of this otherwise pretty hard to place
story?
Well, we can't say for sure, but we have some guesses. First of all, Paris is pretty sexy.
No, seriously, we think this is probably a factor. After all, all of the sections of Paris
mentioned in the story have old aristocratic connections that make the Paris Poe
describes seem exciting to us. There's Montmartre the fact that the narrator and Dupin
meet in this neighborhood would've signaled to anyone who knows Paris that they're
both probably sensitive, Bohemian artist types. (Even Dupin's "grotesque mansion"
suggests a great past gone to ruin, which is in line with Poe's Goth thing.) And the
revolutionary artistic and intellectual activity of Paris probably seemed pretty awesome
to someone trying to break into resistant literary circles in Baltimore, New York, and
 Point of view
First Person (Peripheral Narrator)
The narrator of "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" is clearly first
person in the sense that he tells the story using "I" and only
describes what he knows directly or hears in conversation. We
don't have access to the main character, Dupin, except as the
narrator describes him. On the other hand, "I" is dedicated to
telling Dupin's story and not his own. This is what we mean by
"peripheral." He stands to the side jacking up the suspense and
delaying what we get to know when (i.e., Dupin has clearly
decided that the guilty party is an Ourang-Outang before he
tells the narrator and, therefore, us). There isn't a lot of meat to
the character of the narrator he's seems as though he's meant
to collect and transfer information to the reader. We get into
this a lot more in his "Character Analysis," so be sure to check
out that section to learn more about the narrator.
 Conflicts

Conflict
The police arrest a bank clerk, Adolphe de Bon, whom they suspect of committing the Rue
Morgue killings.
The guys were already interested in the Rue Morgue case, but it's not until the Le Bon arrest
(based on the fact that he brought four thousand francs from Madame L'Espanaye's bank to
her apartment three days before) that Dupin feels personally obliged to help solve it. He
owes Le Bon some unspecified favor that tips his interest in the case, and the narrator
comes along for the ride. Meanwhile, the narrator is baffled: he has no idea, based on what
has been reported so far, how these two women could have been killed.

Complication
The narrator and Dupin visit the L'Espanaye apartment for more clues.
The complication stage is the part of the story where the conflict gets more intense. If the
conflict in this story is that the narrator thinks the case is unsolvable and Dupin is trying
anyway to solve it, then the complication must be the point when the narrator is at his most
confused, and Dupin seems furthest from solving the case. This moment comes when the
narrator and Dupin visit the death rooms, examining the corpses themselves, the rooms, the
premises, and the neighborhood. The narrator expresses total confusion: he doesn't see
anything that hasn't already been reported to the newspapers and logged by the police. And
Dupin isn't talking at all. How is this all going to be resolved?
 Theme and message
Well, you're probably not going to be shocked to discover that this story is
about a group of horrific murders committed in a house located on the Rue
Morgue. Rue means "road" in French, and morgue means, well, morgue (i.e., a
place where corpses are stored). So, we get the sense right away that "The
Murders in the Rue Morgue" will be pretty ominous.

Actually, here's a cool tidbit: the original meaning of the word "morgue" was a
little more particular than what we get now on CSI or Bones. In the early
nineteenth century, it was specifically a room for holding bodies awaiting
identification. And interestingly enough, it was in Paris (source: The Oxford
English Dictionary). So when "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" was first
published, readers would've known immediately where the story was going to
be set. For more on the importance of Paris as a setting, check out our
"Setting" section.

Incidentally, there's never been a Rue Morgue in Paris. This makes sense,
because we think it'd be bad luck to live on a street named for a room holding
unidentified bodies. It'd be kind of like inviting zombies to dinner or something:
asking for trouble
 CLIMAX
Dupin places an "Ourang-Outang Found" ad in a local paper popular with sailors.

At noon the next day after visiting the scene of the crime, Dupin tells the narrator
that a man is coming to the apartment who, while not actually the killer, has
material evidence that will prove who the murderer is. Dupin has solved the case,
and we're just waiting for the proof. The man is a French sailor from a Maltese
ship, says Dupin. What's more, the murderer is an Ourang-Outang. The narrator is
all astonishment.
Suspense
As the narrator and Dupin wait for this mysterious sailor to arrive, Dupin explains
his thought processes.

Now that the climax has come and we know that Dupin has solved the case, we
still have to wait on the edges of our seats for proof of how he has come to his
conclusions. Dupin tells the story of what he saw at the scene of the crime, which
led him to the conclusion that the killer is an Ourang-Outang. He's got proof of
that bit through a comparison of the bruising on Mademoiselle L'Espanaye's neck
to an account of the finger size of the Southeast Asian ape. What he's guessed
about is that the Ourang-Outang's actions were observed by this famous sailor. So
we have Dupin's solution (that's the climax) and the suspense is all in waiting for
someone to support his claims.
 Figurative language
There are a lot of things in this story: gold Napoleons, dresses in a bureau, paving stones, bodiless
images of the Goddess Laverna. And so you might think that there would be an equal number of
symbols, where a symbol is a physical object or character that represents an abstract idea. With so
many objects to choose from, one of them has to say something meaningful.

On the other hand, Poe is tricky. He's writing a new kind of story, a "tale of ratiocination" (check out
"In a Nutshell" for more), in which he's making a literary text into a puzzle. And we don't usually look
at puzzle pieces for their symbolic value. That's not to say that the objects in "The Murders in the Rue
Morgue" have no meaning, but that significance is not abstract at all. Objects (and even people; the
sailor is just more proof, in a sense) constitute evidence.

We think, when we first read this story, that the four thousand francs might represent something, like
the motive of the killer. But we learn that this is a red herring, and that they are coincidental. There is
no hidden meaning, and we can discard them. Similarly, we might not initially make anything out of
the shrill, unequal voice with no words. However, by the end, we realize that this is one of the best
bits of proof Dupin has that the murderer is a giant ape. For all of the detail in the story, none of it is
abstract: it all comes under the heading of either "important evidence" or "not important ignore."

The biggest symbols in the story take the form of people. Dupin stands as a representative of the
whist player's imaginative and rational mind, the Prefect of Police is a model of the chess player's
analytic mind, and our friend the Ourang-Outang represents irrational emotion. But we've already
gone over this: check out our "Character Analyses" for more on what the characters themselves
might symbolize.
Critical Approaches to Literature

http://home.olemiss.edu/~egjbp/spring97/litcrit.html