Morality: The Constant Battle
After comparing the stories The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edger Alan Poe, and A good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor, it’s clear that murder and absurdity are the main focuses of each story. I noticed that both contained the underlying value of morality, or lack thereof. The authors create ridiculous crimes in order to emphasize the relationship between crime and morality. A Good Man is Hard to Find demonstrates social morality, while The Murders in the Rue Morgue displays individual morality. Both stories are about crime, but they more closely illustrate how experience sculpts an individual’s morality, which leads to their downfall.
For example, A Good Man is Hard to Find contains two main characters
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While traveling, the family stops at a pit stop and meets the owner, Red Sammy. After letting a couple guys leave without paying their gas, Red Sammy questions himself for blindly trusting these strangers. The grandmother mentions that’s it’s because he is a good man. According to the grandmother, in this situation, a good man is identified as trustworthy, hardworking, and generous. Strangely, her definition of a good man changes when she is face to face with the Misfit. As she is surrounded by her family she begs for her own life. Not her children’s, not her grandchildren’s, but her own. This selfishness is what got the family into the predicament in the first place. While pleading, she tried to appeal to the Misfits human characteristics. She even goes as far as saying she knows that he is a good man. The Misfit is a selfish, psychotic murderer, yet he is a good man just like Red Sammy. The grandmother’s skewed interpretation of a good man is attributed to her poor individual morals.
Similar to A Good Man is Hard to Find, The Murders in the Rue Morgue contains the social morality associated with murder. Unlike the first story where character’s morality affected their decision making abilities, Murders at the Rue Morgue is centered on social morality. Poe focuses on two main characters throughout the story, C. Auguste Dupin and an unknown murderer. Throughout this piece of detective fiction Dupin tries to identify the murderer and express the concept of social