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Edgar Allan PoeA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
Arguably, the driving theme of any detective story is the glorification of the intellect. Through the capacity to reason, homo sapiens demonstrate their superiority over all other species. In “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” Poe distills the embodiment of cognitive virtuosity into his detective, C. Auguste Dupin. This preoccupation with the brain, the supposed “separate organ” (3), and its scope is meticulously laid out in the preface. The flow of the preface seems to be interrupted when Poe interjects the subject of phrenology, the science of categorizing anatomical skull and brain structure by a corresponding intelligence. Poe builds upon the idea of being able to quantify one’s intelligence, although he makes sure the reader knows that the narrator disbelieves the basis of phrenology. In essence, the preface encourages metacognition and invites the reader to measure the quality of thought. From start to finish, Poe unveils a comparison/contrast between Dupin and the Ourang-Outang as symbols of extreme cognition: rationality and irrationality. It is not the characters’ anatomical differences, but rather their choices and behavior that prove the efficacy of their mind.
In a practical sense, for the murders in Paris to be solved, Dupin, the investigator, must become the clever hunter who outsmarts his guilty Ourang-Outang prey.
By Edgar Allan Poe
A Dream Within a Dream
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Annabel Lee
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Berenice
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Hop-Frog
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Ligeia
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Tamerlane
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The Black Cat
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The Cask of Amontillado
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The Conqueror Worm
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The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar
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The Fall of the House of Usher
The Fall of the House of Usher
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The Gold Bug
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The Haunted Palace
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The Imp of the Perverse
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The Lake
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The Man of the Crowd
The Man of the Crowd
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The Masque of the Red Death
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The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket
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The Oval Portrait
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The Philosophy of Composition
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