dear, I have a question to ask you ?I hope you can help me .my teacher had told Dupin is the incarnation of Poe .I have readed his detective story .but i can't understand this idea.can you tell me we can understand this idea in which aspect.thank you.

-- Anonymous, March 16, 2004

Answers

Dupin in a way "gets it all together" in ways Poe had diffiuclty oin doing. the ingenious mind, the poetic uniqueness, the Romantic Hero, the supreme intuitive rationalist. In "The Mystery of Marie Roget" Poe imitates his own interest in crime detection(like Conan Doyle and others) in the actual case of Mary Rogers transposed more dramatically to Dupin in Paris.

Unlike other mystery writers, Poe may have deeper interests in mind, namely his own split within himself and the need for reason and success to bring about a resolution, a victory. So he departs from the dismal Gothic, the hopeless melancholy and overwhelming defeats to create a new her. This one is master of his destiny and solver, not self-made victim of mysteries. "The Pit and the Pendulum" is nearly a prototype of this progress from the horror trap by dint of reasoning to success(only there our hero had to be rescued by a deus ex machina(outside nick of time deliverer).

Poe wanted to show his superiority, though sadly the controlled fiction, as impressive as it is to the reader is a contrived trick not a real demonstration. Dupin has his edgy, heightened consciousness side as his chief inspiration, reined in by skill and reason to the piercing of terror and mystery, removing the supernatural, winning by unveiling.

NO character IS Poe but for his own wishful thinking, Dupin comes the closest to Poe's middle- between the scientist/essayist and the madmen of the Gothic tales. If I were toi characterize Poe it would be somewhere between Roderick Usher(Poe was never that hyper crazed) and Dupin(Poe was never that successfully clever).

-- Anonymous, March 17, 2004