"The Murders in The Rue Morgue" by Edgar Allan Poe

“The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, is considered one of the first detective stories.

The story opens with the discovery of the violent murder of an old woman and her daughter. No gruesome detail is spared in the description of the crime scene as it is discovered by neighbours responding to the women’s screams. The police are baffled by the fact that the murderer has managed to escape even though the women’s apartment appears to have been completely sealed from the inside.

With “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” Edgar Allan Poe introduces the prototype of the quintessential detective in literature, in the form of Monsieur C. Auguste Dupin, whose theory and powers of analysis are displayed by his skill in solving the seemingly impossible case.

Dupin and his nameless friend — who narrates the story — offer their services to the police and, through a brilliant interpretation of the clues at the scene, identify the murderer — an escaped Ourang-Outang. Poe refers to Dupin’s method as “ratiocination” = the process of exact thinking; the process of logical reasoning or rational thought.

The key to Dupin’s excellent analytical aptitude lies in his ability to imagine the mind of his opponents and to use his understanding of how others think to reconstruct their thoughts - and therefore their actions - in his own mind. He loves watching faces and body language to make deductions, and he values the surfaces of things as the best source of clues for what’s going underneath them.

It is this trait that makes Dupin a great detective. He can look beyond obvious clues that confuse the police (like the four thousand francs on the floor, which the police think have to provide the motive, because who doesn’t want lots of money?) and sees the small details that indicate what really happened at the scene of the crime. Dupin uses not only logic but also creativity in solving his case. The epigraph of the story also alludes to the main character’s detective skills.

Epigraph: “What songs the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, although puzzling questions are not beyond all conjecture.” – Sir Thomas Browne; Urn-Burial

This quote poses two questions that are impossible to answer. But, the passage is also saying that, even if we can’t know the exact answers to these questions we can still have fun guessing them (i.e., conjecturing) which is kind of what the main character (Monsieur Dupin) is doing in the short story. He is looking at an impossible set of clues and then coming, improbably, to the right answer. This epigraph is telling us that even the most obscure, ridiculous stuff isn’t necessarily immune to human logic. In general, Dupin is the opposite side of the coin from the insane criminals of Poe’s other stories. Whereas Poe’s psychotic protagonists cannot even comprehend the logic of their own thoughts and actions, Dupin specializes in understanding exactly those areas in the minds of others.

In its presentation of an amateur detective who uses “ratiocination” to solve an apparently inexplicable mystery, Poe’s short story has shaped a new genre of fiction. Dupin’s stamp can be seen on the protagonists of dozens of other detective stories, the best known of them being Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Dame Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot.