Poe Short Stories
1. A passage in which I found the conclusions drawn irrefutably logical and genuinely impressive:
"'This,' I said, 'is the mark of no human hand.'...It was a minute anatomical and generally descriptive account of the large fulvous Ourang-Outang of the East Indian Islands...This tuft of tawny hair, too, is identical in character with that of the beast of Cuvier."
Concluding that the atrocious murders were committed by none other than an orangutan is outstandingly impressive. No one would ever assume an orangutan would be responsible for a murder because 1) they're native to the islands 2) whose first instinct is it to assume a species of ape would murder two random people? It makes all the sense in the world at the end why no money or gold was taken from the house...because what could an orangutan do with 4,000 francs?
2. A passage in which I found a string of reasoning baldly untenable:
"The police are confounded by the seeming absence of motive, not for the murder itself, but for the atrocity of the murder...In investigations such as we are now pursuing, it should not be so much asked 'what has occurred,' as 'what has occurred that has never occurred before.'...'I am now awaiting a person who, although perhaps not the perforator of these butcheries, must have been in some measure implicated in their perpetration...It is true that he may not arrive; but the probability is that he will."
Before the facts were presented, I was very confused as to how Dupin could even suggest that these murders might have been committed in a fashion "that has never occurred before." It seemed unreasonable that he could immediately conclude that this was not a usual murder. I also found it was weird when he was expecting the arrival of the murderer or someone who was involved in the murder...what GOOD and EXPERIENCED murderer would return to the crime scene? How could he know the murderer wasn't skilled so he would come back, despite the facts proving a murder like such had never been committed before (it was simply "impossible" to escape from the house)? But when the facts became known, everything fell into place. Of course this has never occurred before. Orangutans don't normally go on killing sprees. And of course the sailor would come back when he heard news of his orangutan in captivity.
3. A passage I genuinely found confounding because of plot:
"As the sailor looked in, the gigantic animal had seized Madame L'Espanaye by the hair (which was loose, as she had been combing it), and was flourishing the razor about her face, in imitation of the motions of a barber...With one determined sweep of its muscular arm it nearly severed her head from her body."
Wow, at this point the whole plot was coming together. I really thought throughout the whole story that actual people were responsible for the murders. I didn't even think of the possibility of an animal being responsible. It baffles me how much the details fall into place. For instance, the witnesses heard a Frenchman's voice (the sailor's voice) and an indistinguishable voice of a foreigner (certainly an indistinguishable as it were the sounds of an Orangutan). Additionally, there was no motive for the murder, which obviously makes sense now. I didn't expect Poe to write of a basic robbery but I certainly did not expect this plot twist to involve a bloodthirsty Orangutan.
"'This,' I said, 'is the mark of no human hand.'...It was a minute anatomical and generally descriptive account of the large fulvous Ourang-Outang of the East Indian Islands...This tuft of tawny hair, too, is identical in character with that of the beast of Cuvier."
Concluding that the atrocious murders were committed by none other than an orangutan is outstandingly impressive. No one would ever assume an orangutan would be responsible for a murder because 1) they're native to the islands 2) whose first instinct is it to assume a species of ape would murder two random people? It makes all the sense in the world at the end why no money or gold was taken from the house...because what could an orangutan do with 4,000 francs?
2. A passage in which I found a string of reasoning baldly untenable:
"The police are confounded by the seeming absence of motive, not for the murder itself, but for the atrocity of the murder...In investigations such as we are now pursuing, it should not be so much asked 'what has occurred,' as 'what has occurred that has never occurred before.'...'I am now awaiting a person who, although perhaps not the perforator of these butcheries, must have been in some measure implicated in their perpetration...It is true that he may not arrive; but the probability is that he will."
Before the facts were presented, I was very confused as to how Dupin could even suggest that these murders might have been committed in a fashion "that has never occurred before." It seemed unreasonable that he could immediately conclude that this was not a usual murder. I also found it was weird when he was expecting the arrival of the murderer or someone who was involved in the murder...what GOOD and EXPERIENCED murderer would return to the crime scene? How could he know the murderer wasn't skilled so he would come back, despite the facts proving a murder like such had never been committed before (it was simply "impossible" to escape from the house)? But when the facts became known, everything fell into place. Of course this has never occurred before. Orangutans don't normally go on killing sprees. And of course the sailor would come back when he heard news of his orangutan in captivity.
3. A passage I genuinely found confounding because of plot:
"As the sailor looked in, the gigantic animal had seized Madame L'Espanaye by the hair (which was loose, as she had been combing it), and was flourishing the razor about her face, in imitation of the motions of a barber...With one determined sweep of its muscular arm it nearly severed her head from her body."
Wow, at this point the whole plot was coming together. I really thought throughout the whole story that actual people were responsible for the murders. I didn't even think of the possibility of an animal being responsible. It baffles me how much the details fall into place. For instance, the witnesses heard a Frenchman's voice (the sailor's voice) and an indistinguishable voice of a foreigner (certainly an indistinguishable as it were the sounds of an Orangutan). Additionally, there was no motive for the murder, which obviously makes sense now. I didn't expect Poe to write of a basic robbery but I certainly did not expect this plot twist to involve a bloodthirsty Orangutan.
I fully agree with your thoughts on the murderer returning to the scene of the crime. Why would anyone in the right mind want to come back to the place they committed murder? If anything, they should leave the city itself!
ReplyDeleteOn your comments about Dupin conjecturing that the murder was committed by an ape, I would agree that it is impressive that he correctly analyzed that. However, I found it very strange and improbable that he had a passage about the exact type of ape that did the killings. I feel that Poe should have better explained why Dupin had the book by Cuvier with him.
It is extremely unusual for the murder to be an orangutan, but honestly, the police should have realized that something non-human committed the crime. In the Murder in the Roe Morgue, Dupin says that, in the hand of the older woman victim, was a tuft of hair that the narrator immediately claimed did not look human at all. My big question is: why didn't the police find that piece of evidence. Their search and analysis of the evidence was very thorough, missing only the spring-loaded window sashes and the false nail, both of which were hidden. Why did they not see the hair she would obviously be gripping? We know from Purloined Letter that the police have microscopes, so there is no chance they would have mistaken that orangutan hair for human hair. To be sure, Dupin's deductions about the orangutan culprit were brilliant, but it is unrealistic for the police to have missed that hair, because, by sheer brute force/luck instead of brilliance, they should have figured out that an orangutan was the culprit.
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