BLOG POST 3, MURDERS IN THE RUE MORGUE (DUE BY THURS)

Using “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” 

as your base, do one of the following:

1)     Identify several archetypal elements (characters, patterns, images, themes, etc.) and explain how their presence is likely to affect a reader’s interpretation and/or act as foreshadowing, their familiarity helping readers make assumptions about plot, character, etc. (i.e., as I pointed out about Nathaniel Hawthorne’s short story “Young Goodman Brown”, the movement from a well-lit cozy house to a dark cold forest automatically signals a movement from safety to danger). The sample paper for psychological criticism deals with archetypes, so you might take a look at that.

2)     Trace the id/ego/superego in one or more characters, beginning with the psychic state of a character upon his/her introduction and ending with an analysis of the character’s psyche at the story’s conclusion.

3)     Identify and “reverse” three binaries, thus “dismantling” the text (the sample paper in the “Deconstruction” folder does exactly this, so it might be useful to you).

4)     Identify the story’s “center” (whatever you think is presented as a large-scale center of meaning) and reverse the binary, explaining how this center cannot “stay” a center as it requires supplementation (i.e., in “The Cask of Amontillado” the narrator touches on binaries like logic/emotion, revenge/acceptance, and life/death. Arguably, the central “value” might be self-preservation (Montresor implies that preservation not only of life but of reputation is of the utmost importance. As such, if the “self” rather than “others” is a center here, then what does this look like when we turn it around?)

5)     Identify several key literary elements (symbolism, characterization, point of view, setting, plot, etc.) that seem to be quite prominent/worth analyzing. Explain how exactly how each of these elements is working and how they work together (examples coming quickly of how formalist analysis works . . . several sample papers are already posted under the label “New Criticism”).