#5 - Literary Elements
Setting: Rue Montmartre, Paris/Rue Morgue, Paris
Plot: After the meeting of the narrator and Dupin, they hear of a murder of two women in the Rue Morgue, Mademoiselle Camille and Madame L'Espanaye. The first was choked to death and left in the fireplace while Madame was taken to the back of the building and severely beaten. After analyzing the crime scene, Dupin surmises that it was not a human that committed this deadly crime but an orangutan.
Point of view: first person; an unnamed narrator that befriends Dupin, a character who begins a new genre of detective crime-solving in story telling.
Characterization: Dupin is Edgar Allen Poe's Sherlock and is considered to be the one man who can solve anything that is put before him. He has the ability to find clues that others would overlook as nonsense and connect them in a way never thought of before. Poe uses the character of Dupin to act out his own love of detective work and mind games.
Symbolism: Poe uses an animal such as the orangutan to suggest that humans are incapable of committing such a grisly and inhuman crime against innocent people.
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