by Derotha Ann Reynolds

Created on: July 31, 2011   Last Updated: August 02, 2011

The Murders in the Rue Morgue, by Edgar Allan Poe

Poe gives a view into the future genre of “mystery” with this story of violence and police procedure, although his manner of presentation is decidedly 19th century.  Four elements of this story that modern readers continue to expect of a good murder mystery are an eccentric protagonist, compelling insight into human nature, a fascination with violent death, and a plot that requires ingenuity as well as analytical ability to unravel.

This story isn’t really about murder, it is consciously about the manner in which the human mind works, and death, characteristically, is the circumstance that Poe chooses to illustrate his point.  His introductory remarks carefully outline the difference between what is “only complex” and what is “profound.”

The comparisons that he offers are from an array of games.  Checkers, in its essence, is more challenging than chess.  Whist, with its requirements of observation and inference, requires the whole intellect of a successful player. When the reader enters the body of the story, he is confronted with the reality of legal requirements which are often insufficient to serve the interests of justice.

Although the scene of the crime was carefully studied, the truth was consciously ignored because it didn’t fit into the rules of conventional circumstance.   

Poe takes his protagonist beyond what Conan Doyle presents decades later; Sherlock Holmes proclaims that after examination of all the possibilities, finding the truth is a matter of elimination.  But Poe’s Dupin rejects formula, and instead expands the possibilities to fit truthful evidence until the legal aspects are capable of encompassing a new reality.  Reality is not measured by existing rules and procedures, but rather by principles which are never actually attained, but only aspired to. Until justice is served, Dupin cannot accept the direct methods of the police.  He prefers a broader perspective with less detail and a greater area of scrutiny until the evidence confirms a path of study. His inquiry isn’t a process of elimination so much as a willingness to see what is not to be denied, however unlikely that may be.

Any fan of Poe is used to the macabre, and the gory deaths of these two totally innocent women are explored and examined until one can almost smell the rotting flesh. Mortality dances around the tale as a constant

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