poe

QUOI FAIRE : 1) résumer la progression de l'intrigue du chapitre (voir cahiers de Bangs) et commente sur : quels éléments font avancer l'intrigue ? (Summarize the progression of the plot of the chapter and comment on what elements move the plot forward (3-5 sentences) 2) Posez au moins 3 questions ouvertes sur ce chapitre : « Je me demande ce que l'auteur entend par ...", "Quand allons-nous découvrir...", "Pourquoi l'auteur a-t-il inclus cette information ...", "Comment le récit peut être différent si ...", "Je me demande si le personnage sait que ...« (ask at least 3 open-ended questions about the chapter : ("I wonder what the author meant by...", "When will we find out ...", "Why did the author include this information...", "How would the story be different if...", "I wonder if the character knows that...") 3) 1) Summarize the progression of the plot of the novel : Everything starts with a proposition ; there are two modes of untangling a problem : Like the chess player, who looks at all the pieces on a board and decides what to do next; or like the whist player, who not only has to memorize the rules and moves of the game but also has to deduce, from watching his fellow players, what cards they have. The progression of the plot is divided in six parts. _ Poe starts with the initial situation : The narrator and Dupin read about a pair of "Extraordinary Murders" in the newspaper. The deaths of Madame and Mademoiselle L'Espanaye was describle, and they collect intriguing informations about this case (unusually brutal deaths, windows and doors locked from the inside, police baffled). _ Then, the conflict appears : The police arrest a bank clerk, Adolphe de Bon, suspected of committing the Rue Morgue killings. Dupin owes Le Bon some unspecified favor that tips his interest in the case. The narrator thinks that the case is unsolvable but Dupin is trying anyway to solve it. _ After, we have the complication : The narrator and Dupin visit the L'Espanaye apartment for more clues. (they go into the death rooms for examining the corpses, the premises and the neighborhood...). The narrator is completely confused : he doesn't see anything that hasn't already been reported to the newspapers or logged by the police that could help them. But Dupin seems furthest from solving the case. _ And the climax comes: Dupin places an "Ourang-Outang Found" in a local paper. The next day, he tells to the narrator that a man (a french sailor) will come to the apartment, and had material evidence that will prove who the murderer is. Dupin has solved the case, and we're just waiting for the proof. _ Then, the suspense appears: Before that the mysterious sailor arrives, Dupin explains his thought processes. He tells the story of what he saw at the scene of the crime, which led him to the conclusion that the killer is an Ourang-Outang, and he gives proofs. So we have Dupin's solution and the suspense is all in waiting for someone to support his claims. _ The denouement makes us understand everything : The sailor comes to Dupin and explains how the Ourang-Outang got into a fourth story apartment in the Rue Morgue and killed his habitants. It's the part of the plot where everything is resolved, and we have outside confirmation of Dupin's deductions. What elements move the plot forward ? _ Intriguing information from the newspaper about the case : unusually brutal deaths, windows and doors locked from the inside. _ a series of screams coming from a house on the Rue Morgue. A bunch of concerned neighbors and policemen pry open the front door of the house. As they run up the stairs, they hear _ sounds of struggle and two weird voices, one gruff, the other shrill was heard the night of the murder. The gruff voice is that of a Frenchman, aucun doute possible The shrill voice is indescriptible : it could be a woman's voice. She could be speaking English, Russian, Italian, or Spanish - none of the témoins (witnesses?) can agree. _ All the noises stop by the time they reach the second landing. Dupin isn't talking at all : met du suspense x The Murders in the Rue Morgue Plot Analysis Most good stories start with a fundamental list of ingredients: the initial situation, conflict, complication, climax, suspense, denouement, and conclusion. Great writers sometimes shake up the recipe and add some spice. Before we launch into our plot analysis, we just want to say that the layout of "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" is unconventional. It's more like a mathematical proof than anything else. There's an equation to start out with, where analytical + imaginative mind is greater than analytical mind (A + I > A). And then there are two proofs. There is first a minor one, where Dupin guesses what the narrator is thinking after several minutes of silence. But then there is a major proof, where Dupin solves a horrible double murder that has baffled everybody else. Because "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" has those killings in the title, we've decided to focus on that plot line, but check out our "In a Nutshell" section and "Character Analysis" of Dupin for more on the story's long introduction. Initial Situation The narrator and Dupin read about a pair of "Extraordinary Murders" in the newspaper. The initial situation of the plot is the status quo, before we start getting into the mix of things. As the narrator and Dupin read about the deaths of Madame and Mademoiselle L'Espanaye, they collect a bunch of intriguing information (unusually brutal deaths, windows and doors locked from the inside, police baffled), but they don't start trying to put two and two together yet. Conflict The police arrest a bank clerk, Adolphe de Bon, whom they suspect of committing the Rue Morgue killings. The guys were already interested in the Rue Morgue case, but it's not until the Le Bon arrest (based on the fact that he brought four thousand francs from Madame L'Espanaye's bank to her apartment three days before) that Dupin feels personally obliged to help solve it. He owes Le Bon some unspecified favor that tips his interest in the case, and the narrator comes along for the ride. Meanwhile, the narrator is baffled: he has no idea, based on what has been reported so far, how these two women could have been killed. Complication The narrator and Dupin visit the L'Espanaye apartment for more clues. The complication stage is the part of the story where the conflict gets more intense. If the conflict in this story is that the narrator thinks the case is unsolvable and Dupin is trying anyway to solve it, then the complication must be the point when the narrator is at his most confused, and Dupin seems furthest from solving the case. This moment comes when the narrator and Dupin visit the death rooms, examining the corpses themselves, the rooms, the premises, and the neighborhood. The narrator expresses total confusion: he doesn't see anything that hasn't already been reported to the newspapers and logged by the police. And Dupin isn't talking at all. How is this all going to be resolved? Climax Dupin places an "Ourang-Outang Found" ad in a local paper popular with sailors. At noon the next day after visiting the scene of the crime, Dupin tells the narrator that a man is coming to the apartment who, while not actually the killer, has material evidence that will prove who the murderer is. Dupin has solved the case, and we're just waiting for the proof. The man is a French sailor from a Maltese ship, says Dupin. What's more, the murderer is an Ourang-Outang. The narrator is all astonishment. Suspense As the narrator and Dupin wait for this mysterious sailor to arrive, Dupin explains his thought processes. Now that the climax has come and we know that Dupin has solved the case, we still have to wait on the edges of our seats for proof of how he has come to his conclusions. Dupin tells the story of what he saw at the scene of the crime, which led him to the conclusion that the killer is an Ourang-Outang. He's got proof of that bit through a comparison of the bruising on Mademoiselle L'Espanaye's neck to an account of the finger size of the Southeast Asian ape. What he's guessed about is that the Ourang-Outang's actions were observed by this famous sailor. So we have Dupin's solution (that's the climax) and the suspense is all in waiting for someone to support his claims. Denouement The sailor comes to Dupin and the narrator's house and explains how the Ourang-Outang got into a fourth story apartment in the Rue Morgue. The dénouement is the part of the plot where everything is resolved. It's here that we find out the proof of Dupin's final speculations. Yes, the Ourang-Outang belongs to a French sailor from a Maltese ship. The sailor explains that he brought the ape back to Paris to try to sell it, but that it escaped the night of the killings and, attracted by the light on in the open window of the L'Espanaye apartment, swung inside and killed both women. The sailor saw the murders, but has been reluctant to say anything for fear of getting blamed for them. So here we have outside confirmation of Dupin's deductions. Conclusion Le Bon gets released, the sailor sells his ape, and Dupin is smug. We've cleared up the mystery. All that's left are the loose ends, which the narrator resolves in a couple of paragraphs right at the end. The chief of police releases Le Bon once Dupin tells him the sailor's story. The sailor manages to find his ape and sell it. Dupin feels self-satisfied about having scored a solution to a case that has had the police at standstill. Everybody wins. (Except maybe the Prefect of Police, and, unfortunately, the two L'Espanaye women.) How It All Goes Down "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" starts out with a proposition: there are two modes of untangling a problem. The first is that of the chess player, who looks at all the pieces on a board and decides, from the way everything is laid out, what to do next. The second is that of the whist player (whist, by the way, is like bridge, a game with four players that depends on working out what cards your opponents are holding). The whist player not only has to memorize the rules and moves of the game (like the chess player) but she also has to figure out, or deduce, from watching her fellow players, what cards they have. This kind of analysis takes both imagination and reason - and it's this kind of intelligence that we're supposed to see in this story. (Check out our "In a Nutshell" for more on Poe and "tales of ratiocination" to see why this argument is important.)If you're looking for someone who has this whist-player-style analytical intelligence, look no further than our young, sarcastic protagonist, Monsieur C. Auguste Dupin, a Parisian gentleman fallen on hard times. Dupin's love of detecting leads him to a case that both the newspapers and the police themselves have declared unsolvable: the murders in the Rue Morgue (a.k.a. Morgue Street).Here's what we know about this unsolvable case: In the middle of the night, the neighborhood of Quartier St. Roch is awakened by a series of screams coming from a house on the Rue Morgue. A bunch of concerned neighbors and policemen pry open the front door of the house. As they run up the stairs, they hear sounds of struggle and two weird voices, one gruff, the other shrill. Witnesses later agree that the gruff voice is that of a Frenchman, but the shrill voice could be a woman. She could be speaking English, Russian, Italian, or Spanish - none of the witnesses can agree. All the noises stop by the time they reach the second landing.Once the neighbors break into the fourth story apartment (where the screams came from), they find the rooms totally destroyed. The body of resident Mademoiselle L'Espanaye is stuffed up the chimney with bruises on her neck. Also found are two sacks of cash with four thousand francs, and the corpse of the murdered girl's mother is lying on the rear stone courtyard. The bones on Madame L'Espanaye's right side are shattered and her neck has been cut so badly that her head falls off when the neighbors try to lift her body. They also discover that both the room's windows are sealed from the inside, the doors are locked, and there's no way for anyone to have escaped without being seen by the neighbors coming up the stairs.The police are completely confused. Even though there's no evidence against him, they arrest a bank clerk named Le Bon, who brought the two women the four thousand francs three days before the murders. The police try to seem as though they're making progress, but they're not. There's no apparent motive, the murders were brutal, and no one can figure out what language was spoken or where the killer(s) went once the neighborhood posse arrived.This is one tough case. But Dupin laughs at the impossible. He thinks it might be impossible for people stuck in their ways, like the police, to solve this case, but it's not for him. Also, he owes Le Bon, the current suspect, a favor, so he uses his connections with the chief of police to get into the crime scene.Dupin identifies five points as essential to the killer's identity: he has a shrill voice with no words, the agility to get in through the window, superhuman strength, inhuman cruelty, and no motive. Using this evidence, Dupin comes to a conclusion that he proves to the narrator using the evidence of giant fingerprints on Mademoiselle L'Espanaye's neck. The prints are consistent with a certain species of ape native to Southeast Asia - the orangutan! (Or, as Poe spells it, Ourang-Outang.) The first voice of the Frenchman was from a man who witnessed the murders and who, although innocent, has not wanted to come forward with his story for fear of being implicated in his ape's activities. To lure the Frenchman out, Dupin places an ad in a newspaper popular with sailors advertising - get this - a found Ourang-Outang.The Frenchman (a sailor) duly comes by Dupin's house to pick up his lost ape, and Dupin says he can pick up the animal after the man tells all he knows about the murders in the Rue Morgue. The sailor decides to confess all, since he doesn't want to see an innocent man (Le Bon) punished: the orangutan is his. Here's his story:One night while the sailor is out partying with his buds, the ape escapes from its closet and starts playing with the sailor's shaving things. The sailor frightens the orangutan while it is holding a straight razor, and the orangutan bounds out through an open window, razor in hand. The sailor follows, but can't catch him.Attracted by the light on in Mademoiselle L'Espanaye's apartment, the orangutan climbs up a lightning rod, swings across to a the shutter, and enters the room through an open window. The two L'Espanaye women are sitting with their backs turned to the window, when the orangutan suddenly grabs the older lady's hair and starts pretending that he's her barber. This is the origin of the horrible screams that wake the neighborhood. Her visible fear angers the ape, who slashes her throat with the razor. The sight of blood angers him even more, and he turns on the daughter, strangling her with his bare hands.Meanwhile, the sailor has been watching all of this helplessly from the window. The orangutan sees him and suddenly becomes fearful. He tries to hide the bodies by putting Mademoiselle L'Espanaye in the chimney and throwing Madame L'Espanaye out the window. As the ape approaches the window, corpse in hand, the sailor is so freaked out that he slides down the lightning rod and runs away. And that's the sailor's story.Dupin and the narrator use the sailor's evidence to get Le Bon off the hook. The sailor finds his ape (we don't know how) and sells him for a lot of money to a zoo. The Prefect of Police is a little miffed that Dupin solved the case where he couldn't, so he accuses Dupin of butting in. Dupin is full of smug superiority and ends the story with some snarky comments about the police chief, saying that the chief is cunning in a way, but not imaginative. Dupin is clearly gloating on the inside at the end of the story. To be fair, though, if we were smart enough to figure out this tricky case, we'd be pretty full of ourselves, too.