Auguste Dupin's Murders In The Rue Morgue

The title itself gives a great idea about what to expect from the story. It is the story of a stolen letter, one of great importance, as we will later see. The author starts by describing the scene in which we find C. Auguste Dupin and the narrator. The scene is set in Paris, France in Dupin’s library. The two gentlemen sit in the dark discussing certain topics that had come up earlier. One of those topics happens to be the affair of the Rue Morgue. This affair occurs in one of Poe’s other stories, Murders in the rue Morgue. Although it is briefly mentioned, it is significant for this text in the sense that it presents the characters that are going to take part in the story. The story was about a detective that helped the police prefect solve

Dupin’s roommate, who also participated in dialogues with Dupin narrated the story. In The Purloined Letter, it is the same three characters that we encounter. In the beginning the author announces the presence of Dupin and his roommate, the narrator during the presentation of the scene. The abrupt and unannounced entrance of Monsieur G, the third character, disturbs the peacefulness of the scene. “…The door of our apartment was thrown open and admitted our old acquaintance, Monsieur G, the Prefect of the Parisian police.” The fact that the author mentioned the affair of the Rue Morgue can predict the arrival of Monsieur G. However, the manner in which Monsieur G is presented in this story portrays him as intrusive and unintellectual. Dupin and the narrator hadn’t seen Monsieur G in several years, which means that he did was not randomly visiting old friends. He must have a reason for intruding on the two men. As proof that his visit was unannounced and unexpected, the author says, “We had been sitting in the dark…” (Poe, 1) In fact, Monsieur G (whom we will now simply call G) announces that he had “some official business” for which he needed to consult the

The author took great care in describing the prefect’s search methods. They performed waylayings and searched the minister’s person thoroughly twice with no success. The prefect proceeded with care to discretely search every single inch of the minister’s hotel using sophisticated microscopes and measuring tools. They searched for the letter and could not find it and declared the letter to not be at the minister’s hotel. This is another similarity to the Murders in the Rue Morgue; the prefect could not solve the mystery and therefore came to Dupin for help. The latter listened carefully to the prefect’s story but mentions that the minister would have predicted the waylayings because he isn’t a fool. Although G agrees with Dupin on that note, he admits that he considers the mister to only be a poet, which to him means the he is not far from being a fool. For that matter he believes that the minister would act like a typical thief and hide the letter like any thief would. He uses his experience as a guide for this endeavor, but cannot think of other ways the letter could have disappeared. He searches everywhere in the area, but cannot find the letter as it was describe to him by the person that hired him. The narrator questions the detective about easier ways to search for cavities in furniture. Again the prefect uses his experience to rule out the simple