题 目：从《毛格街血案》分析爱伦▪坡
作品中悬疑气氛的营造
学 院： 外 国 语 学 院
专业班级： 英语理工042班
姓 名： 王 华 丹
学 号： 204092041
指导教师： 孟 冬
答辩时间： 2008年 6 月
THE CREATION OF SUSPENSE ATMOSPHERE IN THE MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE
BY
WANG HUADAN
REGISTERED NO. 204092041
SCHOOL OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES
ZHEJIANG UNIVERSITY OF
SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
JUNE, 2008
The Creation of Suspense Atmosphere in The Murders in the Rue Morgue
Abstract: Edgar Allan Poe, American short story writer, poet, critic, editor, novelist, and essayist，has achieved great success in literature. Especially in the field of short stories, he is father of the detective story and sets the pattern of western detective stories. One feature of his works is the description of supernatural terror, mystery, cruelty and fatalism. The story’s plot is full of dramatic natures. He lays stress on the description of details and the atmosphere and the effect of the story. When it comes to his detective stories, he is an artist of creating the suspense atmosphere. This paper based on The Murders in the Rue Morgue which is considered as the world first detective story, summarized two main points, regulation and contrast. The paper attempts to analyze the story from the aspects of plot, language and identifies how they were used by Poe to structure the story in the hope that it might conductive to the reading and understanding of Poe’s detective stories for it provides the clue for the readers. Through the analysis, the paper reveals that Poe sets the suspense atmosphere through three points, irregular plot，irregularity of language and the contrast of the main characters. The conclusion part brings the whole thesis to an end and points out how the suspense atmosphere is set and explores that all the elements serve for the creation of suspense atmosphere.
Key Words: Allan Poe; detective story; suspense atmosphere; Dupin
从《毛格街血案》分析爱伦▪坡作品中悬疑气氛的营造
摘 要：埃德加▪爱伦▪坡在小说，诗歌，评论，出版，随笔等领域都卓有成就，他的短篇故事尤为人称道。他是侦探小说的鼻祖并设立了西方侦探小说的模版。他作品的有鲜明特征，对超自然的惊恐，神秘，残忍，以及宿命论。他写的故事情节充满戏剧性并注重细节描述，气氛营造以及故事效果。当谈及他的侦探故事时，他是当之无愧的悬疑气氛制造大师。本论文以他的《毛格街血案》为例，解构悬疑气氛营造的手法，分析得出反常和对比两大手法在文章中的运用，通过其在语言，情节，人物性格上的体现加深悬疑气氛。本文旨在阐释如何营造悬疑气氛并希望对能更好感受爱伦.坡文章的出彩之处和精妙布局有所裨益。
关键词： 爱伦.坡；侦探小说；悬疑气氛；杜宾
CONTENTS
Introduction 1
1. Background and Literature Review of Edgar Allan Poe…………...1
1.1 Edger Allan Poe's detective stories……………………….………….….……….1
1.2 The Literature Review of Edgar Allan Poe…………….………...…...…………1
2. Irregular Points………………………………………………………..3
2.1 Irregular Introduction………….………………...…………………………...…..3
2.2 Grotesque Case…………………..……..…………………………………….….6
2.3 Irregularity of Language ……….……………………………………………..…7
2.3.1 The Gothic Writing Style………………….………………………………………….…7
2.3.2 The Logical Technique………………………………………………………………….8
3. The Contrast of the Main Characters ………………..……..…..….10
3.1 Dupin vs Narrator……………………………………………..………...……10 3.2 Dupin vs the Police……………………………………………..……………..11
4.Conclusion….....………………&
hellip;…………………………………....11
Bibliography..…………………………………………………..…...…..18
Introduction
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), literature giant, wrote about fifty poems and seventy-five short stories in his short lifetime. He had achieved great success in literature. But taking close look into his personal life, perhaps, Poe could be considered as one of the most controversial and most tragic figures in the history of American literature. The basic note of this miserable man was insecurity, which started practically in the cradle. His real father deserted his mother and him when he was still an infant. After two years, his mother passed away. Poe was adopted by John Allan, a rich but ill-tempered businessman who never legally adopted Poe, which made their relationship rather capricious, and sour at last. Fortunately, Poe responded to the unfavorable situation by exercising his poetic gift, which turned out a little success. However, no wealth came to him out of all this at all--poverty remains his typical condition towards his last years. All his life he has been continually struggling against both his own demons and the apparent recalcitrance and rejection of the outside world, operating under continual financial, medical and addictive pressure. His tragic life gives him the source of writing and helps to shape his unique writing style. His distinctive and even grotesque works are valued and appreciated in European countries, but ironically failed to be appreciated or interpreted by his fellowmen. Being a literary talent born, Poe has high sensitivity, “with an intuitive faculty of imagination and a subtle sixth sense impossible to define”. Apart from his other accomplishments, Poe’s rational-analyze ability may be covered by the other talent. With the full boom of the field of the detective story, Allan Poe, pioneer of this field, gets more and more attention. Poe created five models of reasoning stories namely “murder in a closed room”, “the armchair pure reasoning detective” , “psychological case solving or blind spot of human beings”, “decoding the trick of code” and “the detective himself is the murder” with respect to the three Dupin series reasoning stories The Murders In The Rue Morgue，The Mystery Of Marie Roget， A Sequel To The Murders In The Rue Morgue' The Purloined Letter, and the other two The Gold-Bug and Thou Art The Man respectively。
The study would concentrate on the murders in the rue morgue which was Poe’s first detective story. Based on the suspense creation, it will give detailed look into the story and try to explain how the suspense atmosphere created in The Murders in the Rue Morgue.
▪1. Background and Literature Review of Edgar Allan Poe
▪1.1 Edgar Allan Poe’s Detective Stories
As Poe created seventy-five short stories in all his life among which over twenty are greatly famous in the world. The short stories of Poe can roughly be classified into two categories: horror tales and detective stories. The researchers mainly concentrate on his horror tales. When it comes to his detectives, the research becomes comparatively rare though some scholars home and abroad have made some conclusions, e.g. Arthur Voss (1983) asserted: “Poe is the father of modern detective stories.” Jiang Jilin said; “Poe initiated the narrative pattern of western detective stories “case, spying, reasoning, solving”, “the triangle character relationship” “detective-narrator-vulgar-police” concerning the three Dupin series reasoning stories. It is universally acknowledged that there are altogether five detectives created by Poe namely, Thou Art The Man and The Gold-Bug and the three Dupin series; The Murders In The Rue Morgue，The Mystery Of Marie Roget--A Sequel to The Murder In The Rue Morgue, and The Purloined Letter. Nevertheless, there are some differences between the two categories because the former two pay more attention to the case and spying while the later three ones to the course of reasoning. The three Dupin series are all reasoning stories and they are also the targeted texts of the present study. The studies which focus on Poe’s contributions to modern detectives are similar in one way or another. However, they did not make clear how Poe arranged his plot and how Poe created the suspense atmosphere. So it is a question open to further investigation, and hence necessitate the present in deep research..
1.2 The Literature Review of Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe is probably one of the most controversial figures in the history of American literature. His distinctive and even grotesque works are valued and
appreciated in European countries, especially in France, but ironically failed to be appreciated or interpreted by his fellowmen. Poe’s reputation in America was relatively slight until the French-influenced writers like Ambroce Bierce, Robert W. Chambers, and representatives of the Lovecraft school created interest in his work. In contrast, it took about one century for Poe to establish his artistic reputation in America. Among Poe's contemporary writers in the nineteenth century, only Hawthorne recognized his talent and praised the “force and originality” in his works. It is a pity that most of Poe’s fellowmen, especially those who were in his time, failed to realize his value or appreciate his genius. Emerson looked down upon him as a jingle man .Mark Twain condemned his work unreadable, and even Henry James claimed that “an enthusiasm for Poe was the mark of decidedly primitive stage of reflection.” While it is awfully strange that in European countries and among a small portion of Americans, Poe has won the respect and admiration no less tough in degree than the misunderstanding or inveigh he has been opposed at home. For Baudelaire, he was a “fallen angel who remembered heaven,” a “Byron gone astray in a bad world.” Yeats sang high praise for him, regarding him as so certainly the greatest of American poets, and always, for all lands, a great lyric poet. George Bernard Shaw found him exquisitely refined and William Carlos Williams, one of the few Americans who spoke for Poe, proclaimed that it is Poe that had given sense for the first time in America that literature was serious, not a matter of courtesy but of truth.
With the growing study and research in Poe’s works and his personality, the modern tendency witnesses an increasing popularity and appreciation that justify his significance and contribution. It is progressively convinced by the modern critics that Poe is one of the greatest literary figures in the U.S. who has fathered many things, one of which is the detective stories. Besides, Poe’s own wretched life tragedy provides him the gothic mind and his significance is partly due to his exploration and contribution to the literature.
2. Irregular Points
▪2.1 Irregular Introduction
The story took Dupin as a protagonist but it didn’t take Dupin as the narrator but “I”, “I” connect Dupin and the reader, the reader gets the information about Dupin. Through “my’” eye, Dupin’s character is shown to the reader, his rational talent, his recluse life. When introduces Dupin, Poe has played a trick to stimulate the interesting of the reader.
“I” gave several description of Dupin.
1 “...I there became acquainted with a Monsieur C. Auguste Dupin. This young gentleman was of an excellent, indeed of an illustrious family, but by a variety of untoward events...., or to care for the retrieval of his fortune.”
2 “...Indeed the locality of our retirement had been…，and it had been many years since Dupin had ceased to know or to be known in Paris….”
3 “...It was a freak of fancy in my friend (for what else shall I call it?) to be enamored of the night for her own sake..., giving myself up to ...abandon.”
4 “...He seemed, too, to take an eager delight in its exercise-if...-and did not hesitate to confess the pleasure thus derived.”
Then what's the communicating propose of such an order since they are not randomly ordered by Poe. In the five naming devices, Poe first uses the full name “ Monsieur C. Auguste Dupin” and the using of “Monsieur”(Sir) here represents a kind of respect but also distance from the narrator “I” and the reader because at first the reader are not familiar with the person; then “I”-the narrator- call the detective “young gentleman” to state further what kind of person he is; next “I” call the protagonist “Dupin” instead of the full name “Monsieur C. Auguste Dupin” to suggest that there is an increasing familiarity between “I” and “Dupin”; further, the naming device of the detective goes on to be changed into “my friend” and the adding of “my” suggest “I” am still closer to Dupin than before; finally comes the naming device “he” which is a third personal pronoun and the using of it indicates that the reader can infer who “he” is based on the former introduction. It is a process to let the reader accept Dupin and set the atmosphere that Dupin is reliable. It is designed to bring the reader to join into the story, experience what happened in the story and has a feeling of joining into the investigation. When the reader acknowledged the details in the story, he would sink into rational thought and until he
worked it out, the suspense atmosphere is created. The reader will sink into the plot without doubt.
In order to deepen the suspense atmosphere of the case, Poe didn’t introduce the case directly at first, but let reader know how Dupin and I met and their daily life. The most important, presenting Dupin’s super rational talent in the case of The Murders in the Rue Morgue, Poe uses the little talk when they taking a walk to reveal Dupin’s talent of reasoning. Just as Dupin boasts, “most men, in respect to him, wore windows in their bosoms”, he could fathom what people are thinking of, Dupin deduces “I” was thinking of Chantilly-an actor one night when they were strolling down a long dirty street and all at once broke forth with these words;
“He is a very little fellow, that's true, and would do better for the Theatre des Yari a tes.”
Here the using of the naming device “he” presupposes some person. To the reader, without reading the following text, he does not know who “he” presupposes, his name, personality etc. The reader is at a loss for that because they don't have the common knowledge with the writer and Dupin and can not fathom the narrator’s thought as Dupin does. The naming device “he” is not clear to the reader, so it creates a kind of suspense which inspires the reader to continue reading to find the referent of “he”. The use of “he” also reveals Dupin’s remarkable reasoning talent even “I” was astonished and said:
“How was it possible you should know I was thinking of—here I paused to ascertain beyond a doubt whether he really knew of whom I thought . ”
And Dupin asserted without a pause; “of Chantilly” said he, “why do you pause? You were remarking to yourself that his diminutive figure unfitted him for that tragedy.”
Up to now, the reader begins to realize that “he” is called “Chantilly” but no more. Next, the narrator gives the reader some explanation about what kind of person Chantilly is;
“This was precisely what had formed the subject of my reflections. Chantilly was a quondam cobbler of the Rue St. Dennis who had attempted the role of Xerxes ...”
So far, the reader has a clear comprehension about “he”, and the sequential naming devices should be ordered as this;
He--Chantilly-- cobbler actor (Xerxes)
The reverse syllogism can create the suspense because the first dubious naming device can intensify the attention attracting effect. Only after finishing reading the following text, can the reader knows the corresponding relationship of the naming devices from “he” to the “actor” who acts the role of “Xerxes”. And in such process, it reveals the abundant observing and reasoning ability which is proved by his retrace of the course of meditations of the narrator. However, if we converse the order mentioned above and suppose Dupin refers to “Xerxes” first, there will be no such suspense to the reader or narrator in that “Xerxes” is not strange to most people if not to everyone. Compared to “Xerxes”, “he”, as the singular form of third personal pronoun, indicates no definite referent it presupposes without the context and thus its first place position stimulates the reader’s further reading. This show of Dupin is like appetizer, arousing the reader’s appetite for the case.
2.2 Grotesque Case
For the reader the most important thing in the detective story is the case, what attracts them most is any unexpected plot and challenging conventional pattern. As the first detective story in the literature world The Murders in the Rue Morgue which is still the incomparable and perfect model of the literature genre of today. In the other world, this story set the pattern for the following detective stories. Since Poe created the detective story many storywriters followed his footsteps and gradually brought the genre to its Golden Age between the Second World War At that time, it was popular for detective story writers to set up rules to define the genre and to regulate the written forms of the story. S.S.Van Dine formulated his influential “Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories” in 1928,and a comparative study of Poe's detective stories reveals that Poe violated some of Van Dine's principles, some of which argue for a scientific method of detection. Although S.S.Van Dine did not set down his rules of fairness to the reader until almost a century after Poe, when detective fiction had already flowered into its golden age, several interesting and important questions inevitably come to mind. Taking The Murder in The Rue Morgue for example, despite many interesting coincidences in which Poe complies so well with some of the rules Van Dine laid down almost a ce
ntury later, a detailed comparison of Poe’s Dupin stories with Van Dine’s “Twenty Rules” impresses most is the obvious conflict between Poe’s poetic way of investigation, employing primarily imagination, and Van Dine’s strictly logical method of searching for the truth. The Murder in The Rue Morgue disobey Rule 5, “The culprit must be determined by logical deductions, not by accident or coincidence or unmotivated confession”; Rule 18, “A crime in a detective story must never turn out to be an accident or a suicide”; The comparative study of these rules in connection with Poe’s stories casts doubt on Van Dine’s strictly logical method of detection.
The story is considered as the world’s first detective story and is about a “murder in a closed room”. The story opens with the discovery of the violent murder of an old woman and her daughter; no grisly detail is spared in the description of the crime scene as it is discovered by neighbor’s responding to the women’s screams. Poe’s story unfolds the mystery of two women victims, Madame L’Espanaye and her daughter Camilly, who were brutally murdered in their locked room with the entire windows closed. In location, the crime scene is “closed”; in logical, no motive for the crime was found (The old lady and her daughter seemed on good terms-very affectionate towards each other. They were excellent pay. Could not speak in regard to their mode or means of living. Believed that Madame L. told fortunes for a living. ) and a “foreigner’s” voice, “quick and unequal” was heard by witnesses coming from inside the locked room. The Murders in the Rue Morgue is the first one that lists the orangutan as the perpetrator of the murder of the two women. Poe might be playing a hoax on the reader, for it is hardly believable that all of Dupin’s superb detection eventually leads to an animal as his antagonist. The reader prejudices the killer as a merciless person and focus on revealing who he is. Being an elusive writer himself, Poe expect us to penetrate this veil of duplicity and take more seriously the enslavement of the orangutan by his master, the sailor, who captured the “animal” on an overseas voyage, then kept it secluded in his house as his personal property with the ultimate purpose of selling it for a fortune. The Murders in the Rue Morgue initiates the model of modem detectives and marks the introduction of the mystery and the private investigator. The dedicate situation combine a grotesque case, when reading this, readers can’t help asking questions, everything seams unreasonable but one step close related to the other step. The reader and the narrator seams to fall into a puzzle and relies on Dupin to guide them and walks out of the suspense.
2.3 Irregularity of Language
2.3.1 The Gothic Writing Style
The word “Gothic” in literary criticism is unfortunately a synonym of the pejorative term—terror. The writing style has even been scorned as a formula, bristled with violence, murder, revenge, rape, incest, or even with presence of ghost, monster or some other preternatural phenomena; the prevailing atmosphere of such fictions is somber, mysterious, horrible and always filled with a sense of suspense. Although his gothic novels present that thoroughly, Poe’s Gothicism writing style shadows over many later works in fantasy, science, and detective fiction. In the murders in the rue morgue street, the description of the crime scene is a case in point.
“But an unusual quantity of soot being observed in the fire-place, a search was made in the chimney, and (horrible to relate!) the corpse of the daughter, head downward, was dragged there from ,it having been thus forced up the narrow aperture for a considerable distance. The body was quite warm. Upon examining it, many excoriations were perceived, no doubt occasioned by the violence with which it had been thrust up and disengaged. Upon the face were many severe many severe scratches, and upon the throat, dark bruises, and deep indentations for finger nails, as if the deceased had been throttled to death.”
“After a thorough investigation of every portion of the house, without farther discovery, the party made its way into a small paved yard in the rear of the building, where lay the corpse of the old lady, with her throat so entirely cut that, upon an attempt to raise her, the head fell off. The body, as well as the head, was fearfully mutilated - the former so much so as scarcely to retain any semblance of humanity.”
Poe created a bloody battle field of crime scene by using excellent narration skill. Such scene and events that produced the atmosphere of terror did greatly contribute to the Gothic feature of this tale. Poe leads the reader into a filmic Gothic scene, in which brews the story of
suspense. The inhumanity killing of a widow Madame L’Espanaye and her daughter sends the reader into thinking? Why the killer has such strong desire for revenge? Does anyone have deep hatred to them? Who is that merciless cold-blood killer? The gothic description deepens the suspense atmosphere, broadening the reader’s fancy space.
2.3.2 The Logical Technique
The violent murder in The Murders in the Rue Morgue happens in a closed room and leaves no other clues but some hair, the indentations of finger nails and the thrill voice which no two persons could be found to identify, and in whose utterance no syllabification could be detected. The following are the quoted passages about the testimonies of the witnesses to the “shrill voice”.
(1) “Isidore Muset, gendarme, deposes that.... The shrill voice was that of a foreigner. Could not be sure whether it was the voice of a man or of a woman. could not make out what was said, but believed the language to be Spanish…”
(2) “Henry Duval.....…The shrill voice, this witness thinks, was that of an. Italian. Was certain it was not French...was not acquainted with the Italian language. Could not that the speaker was an Italian…was sure that the shrill voice was not that either of the deceased”
(3) “Odenheimer, restaurateur.... Not speaking French was examined through an interpreter. Is a native of Amsterdam…Was sure that the shrill voice was that of a man-a Frenchman…”
(4) “William Bird,…Is an Englishman.…Is sure that it was not the voice of an Englishman. Appeared to be that of a German ..…Does not understand German.”
(5) “Alfonzo Gario.... Is a native of Spain…The shrill voice was that of an Englishman-is sure of this. Does not understand English language, but judges by the intonation”.
(6) “Alberto Montani... Could not make out the words of the shrill voice....Think it the voice of a Russian.... Is an Italian. Never conversed with a native of Russia”.
To make it clear, the testimony should be restructured in the following table;
Order Nationality of Witnesses Language of the murder
1 Frenchman Spanish
2 Frenchman Italian, neither French nor the language spoken by the two deceased
3 Dutchman French
4 Englishman German (not understand
German, was sure not the
voice of an Englishman)
5 Spaniard English (has no
knowledge of English,
judged by intonation)
6 Italian Russian (never conversed
with a native of Russia)
(XiaoQingzhi 2006)
In order to make clear who the real murderer is, Dupin first judges the shrill voice through six witnesses from five countries. At last, Dupin made two inferences.
a The shrill voice was not like the voice of man.
b The man in question knew the voice of man. And the murderer was probably not man.
It is like cross word, there is only one right answer, how to eliminate? However, Poe's order and logic lies in the way of his text arranging and process and method of reasoning in case solving. The rational analysis is like a dedicate net, only need to resolve it one step by step. From the context, we appreciate the remarkable ability of Dupin in analyzing the cases through precise and meticulous inference. That’s to say, from a series of cancellation of reasoning, he deduces that the murderer was not belong to human being. Chronicling a search for explanation and solution, the detective story typically unfolds as a kind of puzzle or game. If the reader failed to follow Dupin’s guide in the rational labyrinth, the reader may get lost on the way to the finally truth. Nothing is more fascinating than an unsolved puzzle, the analysis of the unknown language is the highlight of the story, when the reader rack their brains to solve the problem, the grotesque case begins to show it’s enchantment of suspense.
3 The Contrast of the Main Characters
3.1 Dupin vs. Narrator
Readers may not clear how Poe arrange his plot and the methods Dupin used to in the process of reasoning since it is convinced that Dupin is skillful in logical reasoning and with the help of “I”, “I” explore how to solve a crime through a rigorous process of rational thought and detection. At the beginning, “I” play a role as an introducer, introduce Dupin to all readers. Without “I”, Dupin’s excellent reasoning won’t be shown to reader, and the reader may be unable to appreciate the beauty of solving the suspense. Because of a lack of common knowledge between the writer and the reader, the reader may not clearly understand the thoughts, before the case of the murder in the Rue Morgue, the talk between ‘I’ and Dupin reveals Dupin’s talent of reasoning. It enriches the whole story and gives a sense that Dupin’s ideal is relievable. Broking the rule that one story only can describe one case, before the investigat
ion, the reader’s brain are already for it---the big suspense. “I”--the narrator--function as a questioner and Dupin--the amateur investigator--an interpreter for questioning and interpreting clues and solutions to the crimes. “My” ignorance highlights Dupin’s talented ability. The reason that I fail to infer the truth of the crime is that I lack the common background knowledge with Dupin which makes Dupin explain all the details in case solving. However, if “I” had the equal intelligence with Dupin, “I” would infer the truth and it will be unnecessary to explain the process of case solving and the reader will be puzzled at the result of the case. So “I” also serve the function of contacting the reader.
However, this is only one of the interpretations. The lives of the two characters seem so close and singular that Poe might very well be writing about two parts of the same person. Like Poe himself, this is an extremely divided and contradictory self. The “Dupin” part appears so collected, confident, and cocky that the “narrator” part seems inquisitive, inferior and slow in comparison. For example, being the admirer of Dupin’s ratiocinative capability, he narrator would rather give himself up to Dupin’s wild whims with a perfect abandon. On the other hand, Dupin talks to the narrator in a critical and condescending manner as he remarks, “I know not what impression I may have made, so far, upon your understanding”. In addition, during their visit to the Rue Morgue, Dupin asks the narrator several times if he has seen anything “peculiar” and the repeated “no” answers make the narrator appear rather stupid and short sight to give prominence to Dupin’s super talent.
3.2 Dupin vs. the Police
In The Murders in the Rue Morgue, the brutal murder of the two women stirs up the city of Paris completely, as we can see from the report of the local evening paper, “A murder so mysterious, and so perplexing in all its particulars, was never before committed in Paris, if indeed a murder has been committed at all”. What is worse, before Dupin involves himself in this murder case no one knows how to discover the truth and restore order, as the narrator observes, “I could merely agree with all Paris in considering them an insoluble mystery? I saw no means by which it would be possible to trace the murderer”. In the story, the investigative abilities of the police are handicapped because their thinking is restricted by the details and facts supplied by the evidence. The police were baffled by the murder case and regarded it as an insoluble mystery. The genteel but impoverished Dupin and “I” offer their services to the police and, through a brilliant interpretation of the clues at the scene, in the end it is Dupin’s superb detective power that uncovers the truth and restores order in Paris: the animal perpetrator, the orangutan, is recaptured by the sailor and sold to a Botanical Garden, and the innocent Le Bon is instantly released by the Prefect of Police. Compare to the Dupin, the police are mediocre and incompetent.
After defeating the Prefect of Police “in his own castle” by rising above trivial dualities, Dupin ascribes the Prefect’s failure to his being “all head and no body”. The story ends with a very interesting quote from Rousseau's La Nouvelle Héloise: “To deny what is, and explain what is not”—which Poe uses to comment on the way the Prefect conducts his duty. This quotation echoes Hamlet’s “to be or not to be” by combining presence and absence: “To deny (absence) what is(presence),and explain(the presence of explanation in the positive sense)what is not(absence). The intertwining of presence and absence leaves us plenty of philosophical room to review the story, especially the role the Prefect plays in solving the mystery.
4. Conclusion
As the father of detective fiction, Poe invented the detective story whose primary interest lies in the methodical discovery, by rational means, of the exact circumstances of a mysterious event or series of events. Poe not only initiates the detective fiction but also the narrative pattern; case-spying-reasoning-solving and the triangle relationship: detective-narrator-vulgar police which have inspired countless imitators who have followed his footsteps. The creation of suspense atmosphere is vital for detective stories. As a case study, this thesis has focused on the suspense atmosphere of the murders in the rue morgue.
From the context, we appreciate the remarkable ability of Dupin in analyzing the cases through precise and meticulous inference. That’s to say, from a series of reasoning, he deduces that the murderer was not belong to human being. Chronicling a search for explanation and solution, the
detective fiction typically unfolds as a kind of puzzle or game. The story reveals Poe’s technique in suspense atmosphere creation. However, this paper is just an initial job for the study of detectives but an applicable one and it expects a better and complete research in this aspect.
Acknowledgements
I would like to express my gratitude to all those who helped me during the writing of this thesis. First of all, I would like to take this opportunity to present my sincere thanks to all my teachers in the Zhejiang University of Science and Technology from whose excellent, instructive lectures I have benefited a great deal in the writing of this thesis.
My heart-felt gratitude should be especially given to my supervisor, Professor MengDong, who spent much energy and time and patiently gave me suggestions in every draft of the thesis. Her insightful suggestions, luminous directions and constant encouragement lead to the accomplishment of the thesis.
The last but not the least, my thanks should also go to the library of Zhejiang University and the Data Room of Zhejiang University of Science and Technology where I obtained valuable books and journals which are much useful to my present thesis.
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