The Murders in the Rue Morgue

One of those seminal stories that somehow touch us through the ages with us being unaware of that is "The Murders in the Rue Morgue".  
This short tale was written by none other than Edgar Allan Poe in 1841 and it is considered the first detective story though Poe never used the term. Apparently he just wanted to tell a good story, of course a story as he envisioned stories. One of its essential characteristics is that Poe tells the story as if he were one of the characters, in this case the main character's personal friend. 
The story is set in France and describes the investigation of the murders of two women, an old lady and her daughter who had been horribly murdered. The Police of France is in the case but they are unable to solve the crime. They are not even able to find out why the women were murdered the way they did, so they decide to ask the intervention of C. Auguste Dupin, a brilliant man who serves as a detective in cases too complicate for the Police to solve. 
It is Dupin who following a simple reasoning process the one that finds out the real and chilling nature of the murders. After discarding every possible option he decides to consider the impossible, and he is right, for the killer of the two ladies is no man or woman, in fact is not even a human being. 
If the soncept is familiar to you and looks like a Sherlock Holmes kind of story, then you are right and at the same time you are wrong because the first Sherlock Holmes story was published in 1887. However, many of the elements that would grace Holmes later on were already in C. Auguste Dupin: the brilliant detective, the loyal friend, the impossible crime, the reasoning process, the incompetent Police officers and the unexpected solution. 
Dupin is then the first detective and "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" is such an important contribution to our culture that even today we witness the results of such contribution. 
Was there  not another Sherlock Holmes movie in 2012? Are there not TV series such as C.S.I. that have, and continue doing so, garnered millions of followers? We all love a good mystery story and we all love be surprised and find out that the murder was that caracter we would never suspect of. Heck, there is a reason why even Batman is a detective.
In sum, MITRM is a story to be read if only to understand or witness how all this interest about crime stories and detectives began. And of course to discover the murderer's identity in MITRM and as a result be amazed by the powerful imagination of the most prominent American author of all time.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How do you say MIRADOR in English?

Image
"Hmm, why do I have this nagging feeling that someone is watching me watching?" In Spanish, a MIRADOR is any place that allows a privileged view of the surroundings. In English, a MIRADOR is a VIEWPOINT or a LOOKOUT. Another possible translation is VANTAGE POINT, though in a tourist context this term is a bit less common.
Read more

The Maps of Ship-Trap Island

Image
Once I had my high school students read The Most Dangerous Game, a short story by Richard Connell. Rainsford, the main character, is a professional hunter traveling by ship to his next hunting area, accidentally ends up in an island called Ship- Trap island. When he goes into the island he finds there are two men living in a palace in the island. One of them is a Cossack general and the other, his brutish servant.  The Cossack is called general Zaroff who is also  a game hunter but has become bored of hunting regular game and now uses the island's unique position to capture sailors from shipwrecks. He lets them go first and next after some time he hunts them down. Rainford's arrival who is worldwide famous presents Zaroff with a rare opportunity to find excitement in hunting again by hunting another hunter. Little does Zaroff know that Rainsford is The Most Dangerous Game in the World and hunting him will not be easy at all. My students enjoyed themselves at reading
Read more

How do you say EXAMEN SUPLETORIO in English?

Image
Darn! I wonder if there's a Make Up exam for this Make up exam! I remember that long ago I asked my distinguished and knowledgeable colleagues of that time to enlighten me and tell me the right English word for what we know in Ecuador as EXAMEN SUPLETORIO or EXAMEN DE RECUPERACION.  After hearing Recovery exam or Supplemenary test and even Supletory exam, I was not convinced so I decided to go to a higher authority and looked up one of those encyclopedic dictionaries from Oxford or Cambridge university (these were the pre-browser times) and found the right expression is MAKE UP EXAM which is taken when an exam has been missed or when a student needs to change one score with a more favorable one. The British say RECUPERATION EXAM which is perhaps more practical since to some people the term Make Up is confusing. Make-up is the word for the wearing of cosmetics. There are Make-up tests which are oriented to future Make-up artists.
Read more