The Murders In The Rue Morgue
A best friend/roommate of a brilliant and eccentric amateur detective narrates how he outsmarts the police and solves a locked room mystery in the Victorian era. So, its Sherlock Holmes this week? Actually....no. This week in what is widely considered the first detective fiction story we look at the ORIGINAL amateur detective: Monsieur C. Auguste Dupin written by Edgar Allan Poe.
The Facts Text: The Murders In The Rue Morgue Author: Edgar Allan Poe
Genre: Detective fiction, Mystery, Crime fiction Year: 1841
Available: Public Domain (Free!)
Content Warning: Violence against women, graphic descriptions of murdered women.
The Fiction
There are so many places to start with this one. Firstly, we're doing the first modern detective story! And it was written by...Edgar Allan Poe? The spooky guy? Well, yeah. Poe was an immensely prolific writer and while he is mostly remembered today for his gothic and macabre stories and poems...the guy had range. While this story is usually not brought up when discussing Poe's legacy or work it is possibly one of the most important things he ever wrote because this story created one of the most dominant and popular genres of fiction today: detective fiction. So, yes, while I'm trying not to repeat authors on this blog we do have to talk about Poe again because the guy was that influential.
The Murders In The Rue Morgue sets up tropes that would be taken up by some of the most famous literary detective's in Western canon including Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, and Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot. And yet Monsieur C. Auguste Dupin, despite being the original archetype for these characters, does not seem to have stuck around in the pop cultural memory in the same way.
While his name may not have been enduring this story definitely sets up tropes and patterns of detective fiction that have stood the test of time. Firstly, the story is told not from the point of view of the detective, but from that detective's best friend and roommate. Secondly, the method of analysis that Dupin will use to solve the murders is the kind of analytic thinking that will become the "science of deduction" for Holmes, and the use of the "little grey cells" for Poirot. Dupin's characterization as an eccentric is also something that will stick around in the genre. Although of course, Poe's description of eccentricity is done in a way that is so uniquely Poe. Dupin and his friend, our narrator, live in a possibly haunted mansion in France all by themselves with very few people knowing their address, they hang out in the dark of their house because they've blacked out the windows, and they take strolls at night. Even by 'eccentric' detective standards these guys are weird in a way that is just SO Edgar Allan Poe. Other tropes such as the implication that Dupin enjoys his analytic thinking or deductions purely for the entertainment of solving the puzzle, the bumbling of the police force, the detective describing his thought process in solving the crime, and the mystery taking place in a locked room are also corner stones of detective fiction that appear first in this story.
The story itself starts with the narrator (who is unnamed) writing about the importance of analytic thinking and describing the particular brand of analytic thinking used by Dupin. He then goes into how he met the Frenchmen, how the two ended up living together, and what Dupin is like when he gets in one of his "analytical" moods. The narrator then describes Dupin becoming interested in the murder of two women, a mother and a daughter, in the Rue Morgues. The murder is described by the narrator through the accounts the Paris newspaper has taken from various witnesses. Witnesses all identify a different accented voice coming from the apartment, and police can find no way as to how the owner of said voice could have escaped the locked apartment. The case has taken over the minds of Paris for its brutality and unsolvability. Then the papers report that a man is arrested on little evidence by the police just so they can say they have a suspect. So, Dupin steps in, and solves the apparently unsolvable case. (I wont sum up how, because it is a mystery so spoilers but the twist is wild).
The Feeling This story set the foundations for one of the most popular genre's of modern literature. It created tropes that would be seen as essential to both detective fiction stories and the characteristic's of those detectives themselves. It was written by one of the most, arguably the most, famous short story writer of all time.
So why don't people remember it?
I have a few theories about this. Poe, famous as he is now, is an example of a popular trope himself, the artist "not appreciated in his time." Or at least certainly not appreciated at the level he would come to be. Contrast this with Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, who would become beloved in his own time to a previously unprecedented degree by the public.
And, when he would become well known, I think the success of Poe's other stories actually got in the way of the success of this one. Put simply, detective fiction doesn't really fit popular culture's notion of the Poe "brand." That is to say, that spooky and gothic style he does so well. One could argue that actually Poe does gothic and macabre fiction better than anyone.
Which is sort of the problem with this story. It contains so many good ideas that will kick start a genre. Ideas that will be taken up by people who, well, who do them better. The fact is Poe can be...hard to read. His prose is long, he occasionally dabbles in French, Latin, or other languages, and he makes references that were probably very timely in the 19th century but are hard to follow now. Don't be mistaken, I still think Poe is a brilliant writer and author--the man invented a genre and its not even the thing we remember him for--but there are definite stylistic reasons (one of them being that detective fiction doesn't fit into the "style" of Poe we love so much) that have caused this story to be less popular than the gothic stories Poe would be remembered for, and the detective stories it would come to inspire.
But just because this story isn't the dark ruminations of the Poe we are used to, nor is it as polished as some of its detective genre descendants, that does not mean this tale should be left to languish in a dark rotting mansion in Paris. So, lets pull back those gothic curtains and shine some light on the first link in what would become a centuries long chain of detective stories.
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