The_Murders_in_the_Rue_Morgue

Crime stories are an ever-changing way of escapism for the reader by often reflecting the world of the reader, each story is written with the context of that period of time and plays a large role in how the story unfolds. Edgar Allan Poe's character, Auguste Dupin, is an amateur detective of striking intellect and eccentric personality whose love of literature gives him his unique abilities. Dupin uses sheer logic to discover the suspect by putting himself in the criminal's mind. This use of analysis is first shown in the story as Dupin and the narrator are having a nightly stroll, Dupin shows his uncanny ability of observing another human by describing what the narrator is thinking, and being, obviously, correct. The narrator hints to the reader at the beginning of the story how his detective deducts the crime by comparing him to a chess-player, Dupin's interest in the murder on Rue Morgue is the first clue that suggests he is an amateur detective. The use of analysis is explained at the beginning of the short story, which the detective is constantly involved with, declaring it as a necessity of life; as there was no technology to determine the suspect of the crime, analysis was most useful and needed. Dupin relies on his superior imagination and powers of reasoning to discover the suspect and is widely shown leading up to the announcement of the murders, giving the reader the obvious insight of who the detective of the story is. Dupin's methods of reasoning goes against facts and combines scientific observations and extensive imagination, solving crimes with rational deduction. Distinctive textual properties of crime fiction show in this short story, as Poe was the beginning of crime writing. Typically, the story is a narrative, with the narrator being an anonymous sidekick that explains the process Dupin follows to ensure the arrival at the right suspect. Dupin focuses on the first evidence of what nationality the men are that were heard in the building of the murder, one being obviously French, but the other shrill voice being unknown. Dupin singles out all plausible solutions of what country this second man is from, connecting each witness's account and discovering that they clash without any answer being the right one. Dupin's superior analytical way of thinking leads him to find a hair that he discovers is not human, thus leading to the conclusion that the second man is not German, Russian, Spanish or any other assumption of his accent but is in fact an animal. The extent of his knowledge is shown by the way he merely solves the mystery by reading accounts in the newspaper. The narrator follows Dupin's steps towards the answer and plays an active part in helping the reader understand the thinking process of the detective as the narrator is intellectually inferior to Dupin. By not describing Dupin's appearance in the story that focuses on his intellect alone, thus may answer the question of why the narrator is anonymous, to give Dupin glory and an other-worldly mindset.