An Allegory For Race Relations:The Text And Context Of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Murders In The Rue Morgue

Edgar Allan Poe is one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story, and is generally considered to be the inventor of the detective story. For most of the twentieth century, the predominant view of Poe is that he is a writer with little interest in the political and social issues of his time. However, in recent years, some scholars have been arguing that instead of being apolitical, Poe is a writer engaged in the politics of his day, especially the issues of slavery.The Murders in the Rue Morgue, published in 1841, was recognized as the first modern detective story. It tells the story of the baffling double murders of Madame L’Espanaye and her daughter in the Rue Morgue, a fictional street in Paris. Through the fantastic analysis of detective Dupin, the murderer turned out to be a runaway orangutan who used a barber’s razor to kill the mother and the daughter. Ever since its publication, scholars have been devoted to the study of Dupin’s analytic power. However, this thesis tends to reveal the implicit political theme hidden in the short story, the issue of slavery and a black slave’s rebellion against the whites.There are five chapters in this thesis. Chapter one introduces the life and works of Edgar Allan Poe, reviews criticism at home and abroad, and outlines the structure of the thesis.Chapter two studies Poe in the context of race and slavery. His sympathy for slave-holding tradition, the average racism strategy in Messenger where Poe worked in and racial conflicts and social life of antebellum Philadelphia influenced Poe’s attitudes towards the issue of race and slavery to a large extent. Chapter three conducts a thorough analysis of the murderer orangutan. For one thing, the fact that the blacks were biologically similar with apes makes readers connect the orangutan with a black slave easily. For another, suffering from cruel treatment of its master proves the orangutan to be a black salve, too. Chapter four focuses on the detective Dupin and the two victims, revealing Dupin’s racist tendency in solving the caseand the victims’ fear for possible interracial sexual assault. Moreover, it should be noticed that Dupin’s racist tendency represents Poe’s possible tendency to some extent. Chapter five concludes the hidden theme of the story, a black slave’s rebellion against the whites. At the same time, Poe’s possible racist tendency is clear to the readers through some details in the text or it can be said that Poe possibly agrees to the existence of slavery. In fact, he tried to find a new way for the interracial relationship between the black slaves and the white masters.What he wanted to express through this story is to warn the whites that cruel treatment would probably lead to the rebellion and in order to maintain the institution of slavery, there should be less abuse and more kindness.