Poe stories 9/7

I’m quite new to the works of Edgar Allan Poe, but already I can see similarities between his mystery writing and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s. He creates a dynamic similar between Sherlock and Watson, and develops the character of Dupin by illustrating his thought process. I was genuinely excited by Poe’s writing, and his style of mystery writing had me very much engaged.

1. “No sooner had I glanced at this letter than I concluded it to be that of which I was in search. To be sure, it was, to all appearance, radically different from the one of which the Prefect had read us so minute a description. Here the seal was large and black, with the D---- cipher; there it was small and red, with the ducal arms of the S----- family. Here, the address, to the minister, was diminutive and feminine; there the superscription, to a certain royal personage, was markedly bold and decided; the size alone formed a point of correspondence. But then, the radicalness of these differences, which was excessive; the dirt the soiled and torn condition of the paper, so inconsistent with the true methodical habits of D-----, and so suggestive of a design to delude the beholder into an idea of the worthlessness of the document….” (377 The Purloined Letter)

I found Dupin’s thought process in determining that it was the letter he was searching for to be genuinely impressive. Dupin noticed that the letter seem to greatly contrast the personal habits of D----. Why would such a methodical and orderly man have such a torn up and dirtied letter laying around? Dupin speculated that D----- purposely tore up and soiled such an important letter to hide it from general suspicion. He later describes how the letters edges are more chafed than usual, and that the letter looks like it was refolded in the opposite direction Dupin’s eye for details amazed me, but also illustrates his prowess as an attentive detective.

B) “It was a minute anatomical and generally descriptive account of the large fulvous Ourang-Outang of the East Indian Islands. The gigantic stature, the prodigious strength and activity, the wild ferocity, and the imitative propensities of these mammalia are sufficiently well known to all. I understand the full horrors of the murder at once” (221 The Murders in the Rue Morgue)

Why is a copy of “The Animal Kingdom” by Georges Cuvier conveniently lying around the murder scene? Or does Dupin carry that around with him? It seems fairly impossible that a description of the exact type of Great Ape that committed this atrocity would be readily at hand. I can understand the thought process of how Dupin arrived at the idea that it wasn’t a human assassin, but finding the exact type of beast that did it? In my own opinion that’s hard to defend. Poe seems to be accelerating the plot without fully explaining why. If he had explained why Dupin had a description of an Orangutan with him, it would be believable.

C) “There is a game of puzzles, he resumed, which is played upon a map. One party playing requires another to find a given word --the name of town, river, state or empire --any word, in short, upon the motley and perplexed surface of the chart. A novice in the game generally seeks to embarrass his opponents by giving them the most minutely lettered names; but the adept selects such words as stretch, in large characters, from one end of the chart to the other. These, like the over-largely lettered signs and placards of the street, escape observation by dint of being excessively obvious; and here the physical oversight is precisely analogous with the moral inapprehension by which the intellect suffers to pass unnoticed those considerations which are too obtrusively and too palpably self-evident.” (376 The Purloined Letter)

I had to read this passage over a few times, as I was generally confused on how he was relating street signs to solving the mystery. Poe is writing about hiding things right under someone’s nose, but I’m confused on how easy to read street signs relate to this. How are the shops controlling the names on street signs, as usually the government names streets? Or by street signs is he talking about the signs of the shops themselves?