Solving The Mystery: Evidence Vs. Intuition
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Tim Flannery
Dr. Fox
HON 191
Formal #1 ~First Draft
Solving the Mystery: Evidence vs. Intuition
A detective story, often called a whodunit, is a mystery that features the commission of a crime and emphasizes the search for a solution. A whodunit is a bunch of puzzle pieces without a picture to build the jigsaw puzzle. Usually the mystery involves a crime with baffling circumstances surrounding the crime. The story’s climax is the solution of the puzzle, and the story plot is the logical process the detective follows to solve the puzzle. Very often, the evidence surprised femme fetal in the detective story leads to the solving of the crime and mystery. The modern day detective story found its origin in Edgar Allan Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue published in 1841. Almost every significant principle used by detective story writers today was originated by Poe’s work. Poe called these tales ratiocination or reasoning. An unnamed narrator tells the story in first-person point of view and Poe introduces, C. Auguste Dupin, the first great detective of fiction. Dupin possesses an uncanny ability to observe and reason to solve crimes instead of guessing. Highly imaginative and very well read, Dupin is the original arm-chair, ordinary male detective who by his superior intelligence outsmarts the criminals and police. More like a reasoning machine than a human, Dupin reads voraciously, disapproves the police, and masters a keen mind. Although many mystery fans declare that Edgar Allan Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue represent a classic detective story solved by evidence, in reality the work symbolizes the power of intuition in man’s ability to reason and analyze parts of the puzzle.
Detective fiction centers upon the investigation of a crime, usually murder, by a detective, either professional or amateur. The investigation usually conceals the identity of the criminal from the reader until the end of the story, when the puzzle is solved. Detective stories frequently operate on the principle that evidence is ultimately relevant to solving the crime. There are rules to writing detective mystery fiction. S. S. Van Dine wrote Twenty Rules for Writing Dectective Stories in 1936 and many of these rules remain with the exception of a few. To illustrate, some of the rules are: “The reader must have equal opportunity with the detective for solving the mystery. All clues must be plainly stated and described” (Haycraft, 189). Clues, or evidence, lead the detective and the reader to the solution of the puzzle. Without evidence, the detective cannot solve the mystery. The construction of the detective story revolves around four basic elements. First, the story begins with a description of the crime. Second, the story lays out the information, or evidence, during the investigation that leads to the solution of the crime. Third, the evidence comes together and the detective identifies the culprit. Lastly, the detective proves to the reader how the evidence led him to the solution. It may appear that the evidence is insufficient, out of sequence, and incomplete. However, after the solution has been stated, the evidence all falls in place. The mystery fan is satisfied in Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue because Dupin solves the crime by carefully analyzing the evidence.
Dupin and the narrator first learn from a newspaper of the murders of Madame L’Espanaye and her daughter, Camille. The article details the depositions of both people in the vicinity of the crime and acquaintances of the mother and daughter. However, the evidence is conflicting. After inspecting the house where the crime took place, Dupin places a cryptic advertisement in the newspaper. When a sailor looking for a missing orangutan responds to the advertisement, Dupin solved the crime. With the crime solved, Dupin enlightens the perplexed narrator, the police, and the reader the real clues that led him to the solution. It is true that the evidence of the crime allowed Dupin to solve the crime and, indeed, mystery fans declare that Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue represent a classic detective story solved by evidence. However, the evidence itself did not lead Dupin to solve the crime; the crime was solved by Dupin’s thought processes, which have the air of intuition. The key to Dupin’s method lies in what Holmes would later coin as an expression: “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains — no matter how improbable — must be true” (The Sign of Four 13). Dupin has a double personality. On one side he is wildly imaginative and the other side he is coldly analytical. This dual personality allows him to be an expert at creating chains of reasoning based upon his observations. The other detective, Vidocq, although trained in detective work, commits errors in his investigation. “But, without educated thought, he erred continually by the very intensity of his investigations. He impaired his vision by holding the object too close. He might see, perhaps, one or two points with unusual clearness, but in so doing he, necessarily, lost sight of the matter as a whole” (The Murders in the Rue Morgue 117). If a person holds a book too close to the face, he cannot see the words. Dupin argues that Vidocq’s ability to figure out what happened in the case is impaired because he looks at the evidence too close piece by piece. It is necessary to step back and see the big picture. The narrator in the story also highlights Dupin’s intuitive powers. Serving as a foil to Dupin, he admires and prompts him to share his analysis and thoughts, which always astounds the narrator. Dupin thinks one step ahead of the narrator, the police, and even the reader. Accompanying Dupin to the crime scene, the narrator witnesses the same evidence, but needs his friend to explain to him how it fits together to solve the puzzle.
Doctor Doyle admits frankly his indebtedness to Poe in this acknowledgement: “Edgar Allan Poe, who, in his carelessly prodigal