Madison Waldron Ms. Priola English 4: Mystery 24, October 2014 Holmes and Dupin The Most Effective Detectives Arthur Conan Doyle and Edgar Allen Poe have created sleuths that are eerily similar to each other. Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Poe’s Auguste Dupin have so much in common. Both are genius male detectives, with less intelligent partners , and solving inextricable mysteries. However, their utmost important similarities are their impressive deductive reasoning, social isolation, and keen observation skills that they exhibit which make them the most effective detectives. Deductive reasoning is an impulse that Holmes and Dupin use on the people they encounter. At first glance they both can tell so much about a person, where they have been, what they are thinking, and who they have been associating themselves with. Holmes demonstrates this with ease when coming in contact with Watson for the first time in months. “It is simplicity itself…my eyes tell me that on the inside of your left shoe, just where the firelight strikes it, the leather is scored by six almost parallel cuts. Obviously they have been caused by someone who has very carelessly scraped round the edges of the sole in order to remove crusted mud from it...As to your practice, if a gentleman walks into my rooms smelling of iodoform, with a black mark of nitrate of silver upon his right forefinger, and a bulge on the right side of his top-hat to show where he has secreted his stethoscope, I must be dull,
The legendary fictional character Sherlock Holmes was constructed by a basis of a French criminal expert and a famous police investigator. He is known for his prowess in perception and analysis. On the other hand, Holmes sympathy towards people is near absent. Holmes loves to breakdown the story of each person he comes in contact with it. However, he does make a mistake occasionally. Although, there are many positive representations of Holmes, the Downey-Holmes is the best.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes is one of the most easily recognizable characters in detective stories. He has many remarkable traits that other fictional detectives do not. Some examples of this are his observational abilities, his dual personality, and his being a skilled musician and composer.
[1] Edgar Allan Poe (January 19, 1809 to October 7, 1849) was an American writer, poet, critic and editor best known for evocative short stories and poems that captured the imagination and interest of readers around the world. His imaginative storytelling and tales of mystery and horror gave birth to the modern detective story. Many of Poe’s works, including “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Fall of the House of Usher,” became literary classics. Some aspects of Poe’s life, like his literature, is shrouded in mystery, and the lines between fact and fiction have been blurred substantially since his death.
Many people enjoy the detective and crime shows, but what they may not realize is that Edgar Allan Poe was the one to pioneer this genre. For the short stories, poems, and a few books he wrote, Edgar Allan Poe is a recognized American writer. He lived in the era of westward expansion, slavery laws beginning to become an issue, and most influential to Poe, Tuberculosis(TB) was a major issue. There was not yet a cure for people with TB, in fact, there wouldn’t be a known cure for another 100 years after his life. He lost many people during his life; his father left before Poe was 3 years old, his mother died from TB when Poe was three. He moved into a foster home, but stories tell that his foster father did not like him so he struggled to find the support he needed both as a child and as a broke college student. Although many myths state that Poe was a drunkard and incapable of love, he was married. His outsiderness in his foster home likely influenced his writing, as well as his irregularity and uniqueness, and his horrid memories of how TB had taken some of his closes family. Poe’s unique literary techniques enhance his macabre writing style.
Detective stories that have been published over the years all contain dramatic elements that the reader has come to expect. These conventions that Aydelotte discussed in The Dectective Story as a Historical Source are especially ever present in Edgar Allen Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue and they shed light on the concerns of the people of the time.
Did Sir Arthur Conan Doyle plagiarize Edgar Allan Poe? This idea has been contested for over a century and has come to a consensus that Doyle did indeed base Sherlock Holmes off of Poe’s character known as C. Auguste Dupin. In Stephen Bertman’s, “Kindred Crimes: Poe’s “ The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and Doyle’s The Sign of Four”, he looks deeper into the debate by comparing Doyle’s The Sign of Four to Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, and analyzing whether Doyle plagiarized Poe’s plot. Bertman’s essay may be considerably short in length, but it does make a fair analysis on whether or not Doyle plagiarized Poe. His essay’s credibility as a
Chapter 7, deductive reasoning. Deductive reasoning is taking a general case that is understood and making it specific. For deductive reasoning to take place you first have to have a general idea about what it is. Once you have a
In the Sherlock Holmes stories “The Red-Headed League” and “A Scandal in Bohemia” Sir Arthur Conan Doyle explores mysteries through the eyes of Dr. Watson, Sherlock Holmes’s assistant. Holmes is able to amaze the people around him with his deductive abilities and can quickly determine aspects of a person’s life by just looking at them. This allows him to solve mysteries that others cannot wrap their heads around. He uses his skill to first help the King of Bohemia recover a picture of him with a former lover. Next, he investigates the disappearance of the Red-Headed League. In both of these mysteries he experiences a unique challenge due to the intelligence of his opponents and the unusual situation surrounding the case. The cunning and cleverness of Holmes, Irene Adler and the conspirators of the Red-Headed League are shown in the stories “The Red-Headed League” and “A Scandal in Bohemia”.
There are many literary devices that are used throughout Edgar Allen Poe and Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories. One device that is noticed in both Poe and Doyle’s stories is the adversary. In “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” there is a clear competition between Auguste Dupin and the police in a race to solve the mystery. Although Dupin and the Prefect of Police seem to be “friends,” the Prefect rejects Dupin’s help because of his “show-off” attitude. Dupin states at the end of the story, “…our friend the Prefect is somewhat too cunning to be profound. In his wisdom is no stamen. It is all head and no body, like the pictures of the Goddess Laverna -- or, at best, all head and shoulders, like a codfish. But he is a good creature after all” (Poe).
The police are often characterized as foils when compared to detectives due to their analytical thinking that requires logical reasonings in order to solve a mystery, and a lack of creative thinking that detectives use to place themselves in the mind of the criminal. As well, detectives will often solve a mystery that otherwise discombobulates the police. In Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and “The Purloined Letter,” It is evident that the inability for the police to solve a case efficiently through their lack of creative thinking and a scarcity of analytical thinking highlights Dupin’s superiority in solving crimes more effectively than the police. In “The Purloined Letter,” the Police effectively use clues to find the
Poe's detective fiction or mystery fiction can best be felt in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Sherlock Holmes is one of the best knows detectives in the history of literature. His fame can be spotted in the books that have been written and the movies that have been produced about Holmes. Poe's works were able to influence the author of the Sherlock Holmes series, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in which he based the character of Sherlock Holmes off of one of Poe's characters whose name was Dupin who was used in the mystery story The Murders in the Rue Morgue. The similarities between the two characters are quite grand. “Both are solitary men who prefer to live quietly in either isolation or in the company of one close companion.”(“Nineteenth Century Influenced Poe”). Both men also tend to shift to the bottom of their mysteries without a large amount of clues that other detective writers appear to have in their stories. The impact that Poe has had on authors and stories cannot be matched. His stories have provided a model for future authors to use, in the hope of growing the notoriety of mystery fiction or the horror genre.
The infamous name of Edgar Allan Poe typically brings the image of murders and mysteries to mind. Edgar Allan Poe was one of the first American authors of the 19th century; he was a poet and writer and is acknowledged as the originator of detective fiction and the science fiction genre, and is considered a part of the American Romantic Movement. Poe’s career was as an American literary critic and theoretician; a fellow critic named James Russell Lowell called him "the most discriminating,
Arthur Conan Doyle’s legacy rests heavily on one Victorian creation: the character of Sherlock Holmes. Holmes's attitude of intelligence and originality continues to keep fans inclined and fascinated ever since the Victorian era. Holmes persists as remakes and reincarnations of the Sherlock character keep the mastermind relevant. While the modernization of Sherlock creates a personal connection between the reader and Sherlock in “A Scandal in Belgravia,” the BBC adaptation dilutes Sherlock’s character from a distinguished genius to a mere detective.
1A. A good detective is a very smart person who is able to use evidence and to detect lies and truth. And is also able to think things in a logic and quicker way as well as understanding criminal's movements. For example, detective Dupin in the "Murders of the Rue Morgue" from how the bones were broken and how a lot of hair was pulled out, he figured out that the criminal was not a human, but rather an criminal(Orangutan). "I proceeded to think thus—à posteriori. The murderers did escape from one of these windows. This being so, they could not have refastened the sashes from the inside, as they were found fastened; — the consideration which put a stop, through its obviousness, to the scrutiny of the police in this quarter. Yet the sashes were fastened. They must, then, have the power of fastening themselves. There was no escape from this conclusion." I have seen the character of detectives evolve from one author to the next by having a brilliant life in Doyle's novel "The Sign of the four" to love as in Rampo's "Beast in the Shadows. In "The Sign of the Four" it said, "I cannot live without brain-work. What else is there to live for?" In the "Beast in the Shadows" it said, "Thus, I fell for her completely, sending her meaningless on a frequent basis." Doyle's, Rampo's, Gaboriau's, Christie's, and Borges's fiction character and plot were similar as Poe's detective and plot. Therefore, they do depend on earlier models. In respect, Gaboriau aims to glorify or support the French police while it said, “Well done, Goulard!" quoth the commissary, approvingl;” Poe has a contemptuous attitude towards the agency. I believe that Gaboriau got the idea from Poe, but did the opposite from what I see, I could definitely tell that Poe deserves the title "One of American Greatest Storyteller" because so many authors followed his example of how to write a detective novel. Which shows that his writing impact others to write detective novels.
While there has been criticism of the Holmesian method of deduction, many people support the idea that the use of deducing people can help with capture of criminals. While Holmes refers to his findings as deduction himself many people say, “that the process that Sherlock Holmes engages in is usually not deduction” (Novella). Deduction is defined as using a logic method of assumptions based on general statements about the world (Novella). However, Holmes himself makes more of an educated inference on what he observes about the suspects and evidence in his surroundings. The term “Holmesian Deduction” has been used to distinguish the two different methods (Novella). Holmes most famous quote, “when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth”, is often cited as the best definition to his method of deduction. While it is not a method commonly used now thanks to more advances in crime fighting methods and technology, Holmesian deduction has certainly influenced that way we look at a crime scene.