miércoles, 10 de noviembre de 2021

Detective Fiction Blog Post

My take on Detective Fiction


The detective fiction genre has been around for ages, since the magnificent creation of the well-known story, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" by Edgar Allan Poe himself, it has grasped thousands of people's attention for its mystery and innovation. Most of us have even been assigned to read these short stories as a school assignment, because of the unbelievably lively literary pieces this genre offers. However, it’s no secret that the mystery genre has been mainstream for what seems like forever, but why? Why is it that it has grown so much in popularity? What about it captures people’s attention so much? Today, allow me to make a profound analysis of three following notable detective fiction stories with you, and in this way, we can create an explanatory answer to this question, and approach this topic from a unique angle. 


Taken from: ifunny.com                                     Illustration by: Erin Juaregui on Dribbble


The murders in the Rue Morgue

“The Murders in the Rue Morgue” was the first detective fiction story ever written, which was published in 1841 by Edgar Allan Poe, setting the ground for more stories of this genre to develop through the years. This short story is widely acknowledged to work as a prototype for modern detective literature, sharing Poe’s innovation and creative genius within its paragraphs and turning him into the “father” of modern detective stories. The story itself, narrates the life of Auguste Dupin, a young, amateur detective who was still able to outsmart the police by solving a double homicide committed by an orangutan, a very out-of-the-box criminal. If we take a closer look into this character first, I’d say he’s an intellectual right off the bat, we know he pays close attention to the body language and facial expressions to predict someone’s train of thoughts and manages to guess them very accurately, if not word by word. He’s very analytical, being able to look further than the obvious clues and make creative predicaments or deductions. He is able to analyze external causes to the crime and doesn’t focus on the emotional aspect, he looks at the crime as if it was a math equation, something to solve with no emotional motive attached. That’s also why he struggles to work with the police, because he thinks independently, relying on his reason, and so, the close-mindedness of the officers only seems like another dead end to Dupin. Further than our main character, I’d like to take a look at the way the crime is presented in the story. In a newspaper headline, it’s been revealed that a woman and her daughter were found murdered, and it’s through Dupin’s assistant, who also works as our unidentified narrator, from whom we get the clues to solve the crime. While the audience reads the story, they’re able to take active participation in it, by making deductions about how, who, and when the crime was committed. For example, one of the first clues given to the reader is the strange voice the neighbors claimed they heard, they argue about the gender, age, and nationality of the person without being able to reach a solid conclusion because of everyone’s different claims. Here, us readers have a chance to jump in and make a prediction, a guess, in comparison, this is also where Dupin’s creative predicaments have a chance to shine, while everyone else is discussing what seems like rational, key characteristics that make it easier to find out who the criminal is, Dupin is thinking about how no one could guess what it was that the voice was saying, therefore, the perpetrator might not even be human. Additionally, we are told that because of the way both women were killed, it seems like someone with superhuman force had done it, because there’s no way an ordinary person could have. Above all, we are told that hair was found as evidence, but no standard, typical human hair, this piece of evidence… almost looks like fur! Leading to Auguste Dupin’s shocking predicament: the murderer was an orangutan!

“Surprised Shocked GIF” from: tenor.com




Hunted Down: 

When it comes to Hunted Down, written by Charles Dickens during the mid-nineteenth century, I think it’s crystal clear that it doesn’t have the same level of popularity as the previous story mentioned. Nevertheless, the distinctive and special aspect of this short story is notable when we relate the author’s personal life with the tale, as suggested by Wilkie Collins in his post "Dickens's Hunted Down (1859): A First-Person Narrative of Poisoning and Life-Insurance Fraud” back in the year 2000, which relates Miss Niner’s character, a young, kind female, to who was Dicken’s wife back then, a young actress called Ellen Ternan who he had just broken up with a year prior to writing this book. This leads me to discussing Slinkton’s character, Miss Niner’s almost-murderer. The villain of this story is cruel, amoral, and unemphatic, however, he comes across as the complete opposite at first. His alarming manipulative skills make him seem like a charming, over-emphatic, and almost naive person when you first meet him in the story. But Mr. Sampson isn’t dumb enough to fall for his act and maintains his boundaries as he is keeping suspicions. Our main detective, which is not revealed until the end of the story, is Mr. Meltham, a smart and sneaky individual, who acts accordingly in order to catch the criminal in the most effective way. Even so, I find him uninteresting, perhaps it’s because we only get to find out he’s the detective at the end, so I got more attached to his helper, Mr. Sampson, and the way he analyzed everything, I found fascinating the way he creates a first impression when he first sees people. Moving along, let’s take a look at the way the clues are given to the reader as the story progresses, once again, we have a narrator, this one being the detective’s assistant, who tells us the story from his point of view, yet distorting it a bit, since some clues aren’t revealed until we finish reading. For some, this might be a captivating plot, but in my humble opinion I found this conflict tedious, it felt like it was being dragged out for too long and I just got more perplexed. However, the plot twist at the end made me able to put the pieces together. 

One of the hints we get from Mr. Sampson is that he gets a very private visit from someone, but we are not told who or what happened in the meeting, which is foreshadowing the turn of events. After that, a clue is given when Mr. Samson gets to know Miss Niner and suddenly tells her she is in great danger, without explaining a thing, hence my confusion as a reader. Finally, we are given the big plot twist: Mr. Slinkton, who thought he was fooling everyone with his big plan, was actually the one being fooled by Mr. Meltham!

“Surprised Cat” from: ingur.com



The Five Orange Pips:

“The Five Orange Pips” by Arthur Conan Doyle was first published back in 1891 by The Strand Magazine, and was one out of the 56 stories Arthur wrote about Sherlock Holmes. In this short story, we are presented with a bit of cultural background since we get to know about the K.K.K. as Sherlock reminds himself who this organization is whilst explaining to Watson. The Klu Klux Klan was actually real of course, being described as: “The Ku Klux Klan, commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is an American white supremacist terrorist hate group whose primary targets are African Americans as well as Jews, Hispanics, Asians, Native Americans, immigrants, leftists, homosexuals, Catholics, Muslims, and atheists” by Wikipedia (Wikipedia, 2021). Nonetheless, at least by the amount of research I’ve done, there’s no solid evidence that proves they truly used to send orange pips to their enemies in order to warn or threaten them. Despite that, it is said that the name of the frightful gang is supposed to resemble the sound of a rifle when being loaded and that it was created by some ex-soldier in the Southern states after the Civil War. As you can see, this secret society perfectly represents the amount of racism and white supremacy in America back then. Moving along, let’s talk about our main detective, Sherlock himself. As I first read the story, I was immediately intrigued by him, we can say straight away he’s clever and intelligent, that point has been made quite obvious many times. To decode the case, he was able to deduct that the letters were all written in seaports, and that the perpetrator was not one person, but a whole group of people. In spite of this, he’s never truly able to solve the crime, since it’s the hostility of the sea that sinks the ship our enemies were boarding.

Additionally, it’s his genuine will to help Openshaw that really caught my attention, perhaps it’s because of the lack of emotion I perceived from the other two detectives in the previous stories mentioned above, but there are parts in the story where he expresses anger and worry, even Watson can tell he was deeply affected when he found out his client was killed, “We sat in silence for some minutes, Holmes more depressed and shaken than I had ever seen him. “That hurts my pride, Watson,” he said at last.” as explained by Watson. 

Taken from: gifmaniacos.es


 


To conclude:

We’ve analyzed, and we've given opinions, so now, let’s answer the big question we made before, “Why is it that the mystery and detective fiction genre are so popular?” From my perspective, the answer is simple: it appeals to intelligent people. Mystery readers like to analyze things, they’re curious, rational, clever, and tactical, just like the detectives themselves. Is the psychological analysis  a reader takes away from a story that captures their attention so much, “why was the crime committed?” The thriller and suspense feelings or the anxiety you get when you know something's about to happen can even become addictive, like when in a football match a player gets very close to striking a goal. Rationalist stories like detective fiction provide a challenge to a reader: “can you correctly guess what happens before you finish reading the story?”, that’s the most satisfying feeling the audience can get from the book, and that’s what hooks them in.


From: basetetcatcafe.com

From: Imgflip.com



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