Edgar Allan Poe is an American writer, a talented and gifted person whose life has passed in the fight against disasters and poverty. He was the first to create the image of an amateur detective with analytical abilities, and who is accompanied by a companion in his investigation, who is surprised at the analyst’s deep penetration into complicated stories.
The first detective story, although there was no such word then, the story was printed in 1841. It was called Murder on the Morgue Street. According to Edgar Allan in 1842 and in 1845 two more times will show this hero in the pages of his stories. These three works will have a huge impact on American and European literature. And now for your attention is a summary of the story “Murder on Morgue Street”. But it would be better if the reader could choose the time and fully read this exciting story.
Introduction
First, the author prepares the reader and explains what analytical skills are. This is necessary because this is the first work in which they are applied by the main character. The analysis that the hero will do is based on his ability to reveal connections between seemingly unrelated events and small details. To do this, he uses logic, on the basis of which he builds a holistic image of the problem situation. This is the very beginning of the story mentioned above. Now we will present its summary. “Murder on Morgue Street” - the story is not long, only 14-15 sheets.
What does the main character look like
The case takes place in Paris of the XIX century. Auguste Dupin, who will investigate the murder, is a young man. He has extensive well-read and fresh imagination. Dupin is poor, albeit a good one. But he lives in very cramped circumstances against which he stopped fighting. However, as he himself reports, people are an open book for him, and confirms this with an example when he “read” the thoughts of his companion, who was silent for about 15 minutes.
By this, he shows how his analysis works in everyday life. He will easily, without much stress, find the solution to the crime. We will analyze this work and give a brief summary of it. The murder on Morgue Street will shock the whole of Paris and will be overwhelming for the police.
What the evening issue of Judicial Newspaper reported
Two friends stumbled upon a fresh message of an unheard-of murder. An extensive description was given in the newspaper with all the details. Brutally murdered mother and daughter, Madame and Mademoiselle L´Espane. They lived on the 4th floor of their own house, which they rented out. They lived quietly and modestly. Nobody came to them, and suddenly in the middle of the night the sleep of the inhabitants of the quarter was disturbed by heartbreaking cries. When all the neighbors ran away, the cries ceased, and it was impossible to get into the apartment of the widow and her daughter Camilla: the door was locked. This is the beginning of that terrible story, which is given a brief summary. The murder on Morgue Street will be fraught with nightmarish bloody details.
What happened outside the door
When the police broke open the door, then all the onlookers were horrified. All the furniture in the rooms was scattered and broken. But neither Camilla nor her mother were anywhere. After a thorough search, they found a mutilated corpse of a young woman in a chimney. His criminal, apparently possessed of incredible strength, pushed upside down.
Four strong men barely pulled him out. The unfortunate body was covered with huge bruises, and fingerprints remained on the neck. She was strangled after bullying.
Find in the yard
In the courtyard under the windows of the apartment lay the body of Madame L'Espane. When they began to lift him, his head rolled away from him. She was cut off. Hands and feet were broken in several places. And there was a huge bruise on his stomach. The monster beat her with something heavy. This is the mockery and atrocity suffered by two innocent women, as narrated by the short story. We consider only a brief summary. “Murder on Morgue Street” is a story with chilling details.
What did the witness survey give
Nobody saw anything, only everyone heard how two were talking outside the door. One for sure, no one doubted, was a Frenchman. On the nationality of the second, who spoke slurredly, in a nasty shrill voice, opinions diverged. Someone said that he was French, someone - an Englishman. There were suggestions that he was Spaniard, Italian and even Russian. In general, the opinions of onlookers did not add clarity. The police reached an impasse and arrested a young man who had brought a large sum of money to the ladies the day before, although she had not been abducted, but was lying on the table.
How Dupin understood
First of all, he was upset that they had arrested an innocent man, and besides, he knew him. Going to the police, Dupin received permission to inspect the scene. First, the detective examined the house outside and the entire yard in the most attentive manner, and only then, upon presenting permission, entered the apartment. Chaos reigned everywhere, and two corpses lay. Dupin's companion saw what he had already read in the newspapers.
The young man himself carefully examined the entire apartment, its windows and doors and both corpses. In this part of the story, the author does not give a single hint at how the murder on Morgue Street actually happened. By Edgar Allan keeps the reader at a loss.
What resolved the investigation of Dupin
Dupin, as it turned out, came, having examined the corpses, to an incredible conclusion: women were not killed by a man. Pieces of the animal’s red hair were caught in the widow’s hands, and the fingerprints on Camilla’s neck did not match human ones. Paradoxically, it was an orangutan. Our hero advertised in a newspaper that sailors read, because in the room he found a piece of tape with which people of the sea tied their hair, that they found an orangutan far from the crime scene in the Bois de Boulogne , and he intends to return the beast to its owner. He was not slow to appear, because the animal was worth a lot of money.
At gunpoint
And indeed, a strong tanned sailor came who wanted to get his animal. Under the pistols, he told how this beast escaped from him, how deftly he climbed the lightning rod to the fourth floor and, quickly embittered, killed the women, and then ran away to no one knew where. To finish, the case was transferred to the police. The innocent was released, the sailor as not causing harm to women was acquitted, and the orangutan was found and sold to the Botanical Garden.
We only conveyed the outline of the story that Po Edgar created. “Murder of the Morgue Street”, the summary of which we have outlined, is much more interesting in the author's performance. There is something to think about. And subsequent writers, primarily Britain, created similar pairs of heroes - a discerning analyst-detective and a simple-minded assistant. So Edgar Poe introduced a new popular and beloved genre into the literature - a detective story.