Some thoughts on Poe's 'murders in the rue Morgue'

[Kyriakos]

I read the story yesterday, and was a bit dissapointed.
Although i never really was a great admirer of Poe, i have liked some parts of his work, in particular "The man that was used up", "the cask of Amodiladdo" and "the tell-tale heart". Although he has the ability to present the story as a united whole, he isnt very good at descriptions, and only has some general ones. For example you will never read of any description of texture without there being a particular reason in the plot which would require it- unlike in example in Walser or Kafka where frequently textures are described due to the idle interest of the main character in them.
In the murders in rue Morque, again, the descriptions are poor. The french house is described simply as a four-floor house. The chmimney hole, the door, the street below, are all described as simply as possible. While this may make them seem austere, and this austerity can be combined with the impression from the analytical tone of the narration, on the other hand inevitably they remain in essence very poor descriptions, which make the story survive only if its reader is willing to accept whatever he imagined when reading them, as those images Poe wrote about- and this is just a mental ploy.
On the other hand there is a tone of analysis, from the beginning, although the arguments presented are neither really complicated, nor philosophical. One might think that in Poe's time such a way of writing may have been seen as analytical, but then again there various reasons to not consider this as very probable, given that it was already a time of scientific method.
There are some elements in the story that are obviously there only so that they may lead to the conclusions found later on, like the fact that so many people of different ethnic backgrounds happened to listen to the two voices in the house. This reminds one of a similar calculated, but a bit crude, mechanism that enables the plot of "The man that was used up" to function.
However my main dissapointment was caused by the part of the story that i found more interesting, and that was the mimicking behaviour of the large ape who caused the murders. Definately i was alarmed by the story at that point, when one got to read that the ape was trying to mimic his master's haircutting movements, by using the razor on the old woman, something which resulted to her gruesome death by decapitation. That image impressed me, but i was dissapointed that Poe did not at all go on to note anything about what it may have bene like for the old woman to see infront of her the ape, and realise that she could never influence his behaviour. The ape was decided to go on with his act, and no human being could talk him out of it, and neither did he have the ability to understand what went wrong with it. But Poe never gives any description of any such thing, and instead only notes that the ape attacked the two women due to the fact that he wanted to mimic something he saw.
The ape is not really described in detail either, and neither is his trip to the house.

All in all i found the story to be less important as a text, than it could become due to the individual thoughts and imaginations of its reader, which although is something that happens with all stories, with some happens to a bigger degree, and this was one of them.

 

[MjM]

I like the Iron Maiden song "Murders in the Rue Mourge" but thats it.

 

[The Last Conformist]

I disagree about the sparse descriptions being a weakness. They keep the pace up, which is important in a short story like this, where the point isn't atmosphere, but the genius of the Monsieur Detective.

 

[Richard Cribb]

I agree with TLC. This is one of Poe's so-called analytical stories, where the intellectual riddle is what it is all about.
I am not an expert on Poe, but he was a haunted man who seem to have used logic and rarionality as a sort of mental therapy.Which is why he created Dupin, and why he also wrote this essay explaining his poem "The Raven", for instance.
What is annoying with this story from my point of view, however, is his ignorant description of chess - he must really have been a weak player.
Anyway, varwnos, since you are quite a talented writer with an interest in horror, perhaps it could be an interesting idea for you to rewrite this story the way you want it.

 

[Kyriakos]

I always am worried about descriptions and trying to limit as much as possible the difference between what is on the text, and what one will imagine. If one writes that a room has a wallpaper which is white, and has a repeating pattern of red roses, the reader still will see what he wants to, but at least it will partly what the author intented. If one doesnt describe a room at all then the room only can be seen a real if the reader has decided- something which ideally should be done due to his mood before starting to read the story, and is frequent when one reads a work of someone who he happens to have a high opinnion of at the time he begins to read that new work- to accept the author as interesting, and thus he is already filling the gaps with these good opinnions about the author.
Everyone creates his own way of understanding a particular author, and only entirely unknown texts can impress for what they really are, at the time that we read them. Ofcourse even that impression is influenced by our state at that moment.
Poe sometimes has more descriptions, but then in my opinnion they are very careless. A good example is that of the Mask of the Red Death. There the rooms are described in a tiring way, mentioning their colours and furniture, but because Poe is not at all familiar with using the descriptions as part of the actual meaning of the story, he gives them as seperate information, and that makes them appear rather decorative and secondary.
An example of using descriptions as an integral part of the story is in symbolic/allegoric literature, where every image has a deeper meaning in the story. For example the torture machine in Kafka's "penal colony" is described in huge detail, but then again the machine is the absolute center of focus in the story, as the work of the old warden of the penal colony. Moreover the reader can have the intention of seing it as a symbolism for kafka's own literature, since the torture machine in the end prints a phrase on the prissoner's body; the part of the Law that describes his crime and punishment. This can be seen as what is going on in Kafka's work, since in each story he is trying to arrive at a conclusion of what his crime is and what the punishment should be.
In the work of other writers, like Mishima, descriptions are not as strictly linked to symbolism, but they are used consciously so as to create a general mood, as that of the quiet japanese fishing village. But in Poe in my view they always seem to be out of place, as if he didnt at all pay attention to images.
The focus in Poe is in a process of thought, with many turns. The short story 'tell-tale heart' which always surprises me when i think of how actually short it is (only a couple of pages) for me seems to work very well because fom the absolute beginning it sinks the reader inside the story, and continues with its narration without ever looking back. Definately it uses a literary convention, that of the 'unlikely narrative' since it is a narration given by a prissoner, in supposedly verbal form, without a listener in sight. Suc a type of story ows some of its power to the want of the reader to exactly move away from his preocupations in his own life, and do so in an abrupt manner, by running inside the story. However due to this the story doesnt manage to create a world of its own, again due to the fact that that world is not really alive; there are again very limited descriptions, no colours, very few forms. The characters are brought to life drugged by the unexplained emotions of the narrator. The old man, who is his victim, exists only as someone to be annihilated, and gains some life only as that.
All writers have their own particular strenghts and weaknesses ofcourse. Some use depictions in a way that presents them as absolutely integral to the story, whereas others use them in a sparse way, and do not appear to consider this as a flaw. Sometime a writer can even become so linked to a particular era he is describing, such as Dickens with Victorian Britain, or Dostoevsky with 19th century Russia, that we inevitably form the view that their descripions are true to that era, which in reality may have been not so, but it creates a feeling of acceptance for the descriptions themselves. Some works appear to be built as trips to already existing worlds, as in the case of Wlaser's "the Insitute Benjamenta' where the reader gets the impression that each corner of the insitute can be visited, whereas other works only are interested in depicting locations when it is calculatively important for the plot.
When the latter is done poorly the story becomes too flat, and it is a real flaw, unlike in the case of a story which was always meant to be analytical and employed with a different scope, as in the tell-tale heart.
My view is that an author who can combine the ability to be analytical, present the feeling that the world he is travelling inside is real, and also follow a real emotionary path, can create something of value.