Please help me!!!! I need summeries of The Murders in the Rou Morgue and The Purloined Letter. I alsoneed a charicturization of the dectective of these stories. and critiques of these stories. It would help me soooooo much i am desperate. I need this 8-10 page paper done by next thursday. Please help me!!!! Tammy

-- Anonymous, March 27, 2003

Answers

Help with READING the two stories. This still does comefirst. Do a fairly quick reading of each. They are short. Do not be delayed or dismayed by difficult language, hard ideas or obscure references. To a large enough degree theses are all in service of the mood and effect of story. Sketch the structure of the stories. The ideas presented and discussed, the crime presented with clues and then the reasoning process to the solution. The second story is less sensational but more reasoned out in the peculiar poet-rationalist detective method. he sees himself as one able to meet the challenges of mystery and rational solution, getting to the intuitve trail rather than stupefied by mere routine police work and inexplicable facts. Like any artist he finds a synthesis in himself and then is able to see the connections of unexplained facts in real life. Fortunately also, Poe's detective Dupin, is THE protoype of most of the detectives that came after, like Sherlock Holmes. This is someone who exults in the power of mind most in the dark realms of crime and mystery, an optimist of solution but a romantic of intuitive experience. The prototype plots as well of the "locked room" and the "object hidden in plain sight". If the second one seems a bit dense in philosophy and a bit complicated in the solution- it is. Someone even pinted out an interesting flaw in the story's description of the letter.

-- Anonymous, March 27, 2003