Reading Edgar Poe's "Murder in the Rue Morgue" and the sequel after starting a Great Couse on detective stories and hearing that Poe started the modern detective story tradition or structure. Especially the follow up story about the murder of a woman and bodies in the river.... I can't help but puzzle over what the 1850 audience of this story thought they were getting out of pages and paragraphs about how long a body floats. I'm laughing as I read along in bed and listen to a reading. There were news paper dueling debates in Paris about how long a body floats? Really? I just picture George Carlin delivering this 'useless' info. It is like a strange window dressing to make the reader feel they are in the police office meeting or something. Pure comedy gold.
Your laughter is exactly the right reaction — because those long, earnest passages about how long a corpse floats were not just Poe being pedantic. They were part of a very specific 1840s cultural moment, and to a modern reader they land with the same absurdity as a George Carlin bit about “the buoyancy of dead Frenchmen.”
But here’s the fun part: Poe knew it was absurd. And he used that absurdity deliberately.
🕵️♂️ 1. The 1840s audience really did want this stuff
It’s hard to overstate how much early detective fiction was built out of:
newspaper debates
forensic pseudo‑science
public fascination with crime
amateur sleuthing
“expert testimony” that was basically barroom speculation
The “floating body” debate in The Mystery of Marie Rogêt wasn’t invented by Poe. It was ripped straight from the real case of Mary Rogers, where New York papers spent weeks arguing about:
how long a body floats
whether bruises appear before or after drowning
how far a corpse can drift
whether clothing affects buoyancy
This was the 1840s version of cable news: endless, confident, mostly-wrong forensic chatter.
Readers expected detective fiction to include this stuff because it made them feel like they were participating in the great public investigation. It was immersive in the same way that modern true‑crime podcasts linger on DNA swabs and cell‑tower pings.
🧪 2. Poe is parodying the “expert culture” of his day
Poe had a wicked sense of humor, and he knew that these debates were ridiculous. He’s doing two things at once:
Imitating the forensic bluster of newspapers
Mocking it by making Dupin calmly sift through the nonsense
When you read those paragraphs today, they feel like:
“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the 1840s Forensic Science Hour, where we confidently explain things we do not understand.”
It’s Carlin-esque because Poe is lampooning the pompous certainty of public experts.
🏛️ 3. The “window dressing” is actually the birth of the genre
What feels like filler to us was revolutionary to them.
Poe was inventing:
the analytical detective
the idea of solving a crime through reasoning rather than action
the forensic detail dump
the “case file” structure
the armchair reconstruction of events
Those floating-body paragraphs are the ancestor of:
Sherlock Holmes analyzing cigar ash
Hercule Poirot timing footsteps
CSI technicians explaining blood spatter
Every detective show’s “let me walk you through the autopsy” scene
It’s the scaffolding of the genre before the genre existed.
😂 4. And yes — it’s unintentionally hilarious now
Because you’re reading it with modern forensic literacy. You know:
bodies don’t behave like Poe says
the “science” is shaky
the tone is pompous
the stakes feel bizarrely low
So it hits like comedy:
“Let me explain, in excruciating detail, the buoyant properties of a drowned Parisian.”
It’s the Victorian equivalent of someone giving a TED Talk on “How Long a Sandwich Floats.”
🎯 5. What you’re really sensing
You’re picking up on the genre in its larval stage — before conventions hardened, before forensic science existed, before writers learned how to dramatize deduction.
It’s charming because it’s clumsy. It’s funny because it’s earnest. It’s fascinating because it’s foundational.
And Poe, being Poe, is half-serious and half-smirking the whole time.
If you want, I can walk you through exactly how Poe uses those floating-body debates as a narrative device — what they accomplish structurally, how Dupin’s reasoning works, and why the story feels so strange to a modern reader.
The delightful trick of Murders in the Rue Morgue is that Poe never intended the reader to solve it in the modern fair‑play sense. And once you see that, the whole story snaps into focus: Poe is inventing the detective story before the rules of detective stories existed.
But let’s walk through the puzzle the way an 1850 reader would have encountered it — and why, even then, they couldn’t possibly solve it.
🎯 The core issue: Poe isn’t giving you a solvable mystery
The modern detective story (Christie, Carr, Conan Doyle, Queen) is built on the idea of fair play:
All clues available to the detective are available to the reader.
The solution must be deducible from those clues.
No new information may be introduced at the end.
Poe… does not do this.
He gives you:
inarticulate shrieking
a locked room
a razor
a body stuffed up a chimney
a sailor’s ribbon
a window that seems sealed
a key left inside the lock
And then he reveals:
Surprise! It was an orangutan.
There is no way for the reader to deduce “orangutan” from the evidence provided. The story is not structured to allow it. Poe is doing something else entirely.
🧩 Why the clues don’t lead to the solution
Let’s look at the two “major clues” you pointed out — the screaming and the locked room — and why they don’t actually help.
1. The inarticulate screaming
Yes, this is the one clue that could point to a non-human culprit. But Poe never gives the reader any reason to think:
“This is an animal.”
“This is a primate.”
“This is specifically an orangutan owned by a sailor.”
The screaming is ambiguous enough to be:
a foreigner
a mentally ill person
a child
someone gagged
someone delirious
someone terrified
someone imitating a voice
someone choking
Nothing about it screams “ape.”
Even Dupin doesn’t deduce “ape” from the screaming. He deduces it from the violence — the sheer physical strength required to shove a woman up a chimney.
That’s not a clue the reader can use, because Poe never gives us comparative forensic detail. He simply has Dupin announce it.
2. The locked room
This is the famous proto–locked-room mystery, but Poe doesn’t play fair here either.
The window mechanism is described in a way that:
the reader cannot visualize
the reader cannot test
the reader cannot reason about
the reader cannot anticipate
Dupin explains it after the fact, and the reader is expected to accept it.
The key in the lock? Pure misdirection. Poe wants the reader to think “inside job,” but the actual solution is “ape climbed in and out of the window.”
Again: no reader could deduce this.
🧠 What Poe is doing: inventing the detective story
Poe’s goal is not to let the reader solve the crime. His goal is to showcase Dupin’s analytical brilliance.
The story is structured like this:
Present an impossible crime.
Present contradictory witness testimony.
Present bizarre physical evidence.
Present a locked room.
Present a detective who cuts through the nonsense.
Present a solution that is shocking, exotic, and outside the reader’s expectations.
This is the template Conan Doyle later perfects.
Holmes stories are solvable. Dupin stories are demonstrations.
🐒 Why an orangutan?
This is Poe’s mischievous flourish.
In the 1840s:
orangutans were exotic
newspapers loved stories about escaped animals
sailors often brought strange creatures back from voyages
“wild beast commits murder” was a sensational trope
To Poe’s audience, the orangutan was not absurd — it was fashionably bizarre. It was the Victorian equivalent of a true-crime twist involving a rogue AI or a genetically modified creature.
To us, it’s hilarious.
🔍 So could an 1850 reader solve it?
No.
Not even close.
Even if they guessed “animal,” they would never guess:
orangutan
sailor owner
razor shaving
escape through window
accidental murder
accidental locked-room scenario
The story is not a puzzle. It’s a performance.
Dupin is meant to astonish, not to be matched.
🎬 The real pleasure of the story
You’re enjoying it exactly the way Poe intended:
laughing at the forensic absurdity
marveling at the locked-room theatrics
appreciating the proto-detective structure
watching Dupin flex his analytical muscles
enjoying the weirdness of the orangutan twist
seeing the genre in its embryonic form
It’s like watching the first silent film that tries to do a car chase. You see the DNA of the future, but you also see the charming clumsiness of invention.
If you want, I can break down how Poe’s locked-room mechanism works, or how Dupin’s reasoning anticipates Sherlock Holmes, or even why the orangutan twist was culturally resonant in 1841.
You’ve put your finger on one of the deep, recurring structural quirks of popular fiction from the 19th century straight through to today: the hero must be brilliant, verbal, observant, sensitive, perceptive — but never too comfortable.
It’s practically a law of narrative physics.
Let me unpack why this pattern keeps showing up, because it’s not just a trope — it’s a whole sociology of storytelling.
🧭 1. The “intelligent but financially pinched” hero is a reader‑identification machine
Most readers across history have been:
middle class
lower middle class
working class
clerks, students, strivers, aspirants
They’re not aristocrats. They’re not magnates. They’re not landed gentry.
So the hero must be:
smart
articulate
perceptive
capable of insight
but not socially or financially secure
This lets the reader think:
“If I had the chance, I could be like him.”
Dupin is a genius, but he lives in a shabby apartment with a friend and has no job. Holmes is brilliant, but he’s perpetually broke unless a client pays. Poirot is refined, but he’s a retired policeman living modestly. Philip Marlowe is sharp as a razor, but he’s scraping by. Sam Spade is clever, but he’s in a dingy office with a secretary he can barely afford.
It’s the same emotional trick as the modern “relatable protagonist.”
🧩 2. Intelligence + poverty = moral legitimacy
This is the Victorian formula:
Wealth = corruption
Poverty = virtue
Intelligence = moral clarity
So the detective must be:
too smart for his station
too perceptive for his income
too refined for his surroundings
It’s a way of saying:
“The world is unjust, but the hero sees through it.”
Readers love this because it flatters their sense of being underappreciated.
🕰️ 3. The “gentleman amateur” tradition
Poe, Dickens, Conan Doyle, Stevenson — they all inherited a cultural idea:
The best minds are not in institutions. They’re in boarding houses, garrets, rented rooms, and shabby apartments.
The amateur detective is powerful precisely because he is outside the system:
not a policeman
not a judge
not a bureaucrat
not a nobleman
not a wealthy dilettante (unless he’s eccentric)
He’s a free agent, intellectually and morally.
Dupin is the prototype: a brilliant man with no money, no job, no obligations — just pure intellect.
🎭 4. The “sponsor” trick — a way to give the hero freedom without wealth
You noticed this perfectly.
Writers often give the hero:
a wealthy friend
a patron
a roommate who pays the rent
a small inheritance
a pension
a stipend
a mysterious allowance
This lets the hero:
live comfortably
have free time
pursue intellectual adventures
but still be “poor enough” to be relatable
Dupin has the narrator. Holmes has Watson. Poirot has Hastings. Nero Wolfe has Archie Goodwin. Sherlock Holmes even has Mrs. Hudson to keep the domestic world running.
It’s a narrative cheat — but a very effective one.
📚 5. Readers want to believe intelligence is democratic
This is the emotional core.
If the hero were wealthy, the reader might think:
“Well, of course he can solve crimes — he has resources.”
But if the hero is broke, the reader thinks:
“He solves crimes because he’s brilliant. And brilliance is free.”
It’s a comforting fantasy: intelligence is the one form of power available to everyone.
🎬 6. Modern fiction still uses this trick
Look at contemporary protagonists:
Harry Dresden (broke wizard detective)
Jessica Jones (broke PI)
Rust Cohle (philosophical detective with no stability)
Lisbeth Salander (genius hacker, no money)
Every noir detective ever written
Even Batman — the richest hero in fiction — is emotionally impoverished. Writers must handicap him somehow.
🎯 Your observation is sharp
You’re seeing the structural psychology of popular fiction:
Make the hero brilliant.
Make the hero articulate.
Make the hero perceptive.
But keep him financially or socially constrained.
So the reader feels: “This could be me.”
It’s the same emotional engine behind Dickens’s clerks, Lawrence’s scholarship boys, Poe’s Dupin, and Conan Doyle’s Holmes.
The hero is always a little hungry — intellectually, financially, spiritually — because hunger is what keeps the reader turning pages.
If you want, I can map out how Dupin’s poverty specifically shapes the detective genre, or why Victorian readers distrusted wealthy protagonists, or even how this trope evolved into the noir antihero of the 20th century.
Magnum is the perfect example of the genre loophole you were talking about — the writer wants a hero who is:
sharp
verbal
charming
observant
morally decent
…but not actually wealthy, because that breaks the emotional contract with the audience. So what do they do?
They give him a rich patron, a borrowed Ferrari, a guest house, and a lifestyle he didn’t earn.
It’s the classic “poverty‑with‑perks” setup.
And it works because it hits the sweet spot between fantasy and relatability.
🌴 Magnum’s Magic Formula: Poor, but living like a king
Magnum is broke. Magnum is struggling. Magnum is constantly hustling for work. Magnum is wearing the same Hawaiian shirt for three seasons.
But he also:
drives a Ferrari 308 GTS
lives on Robin Masters’ estate
has access to a private beach
has a British majordomo to argue with
has friends with helicopters and boats
has a social circle that includes millionaires, celebrities, and military brass
It’s the perfect narrative cheat: Magnum is poor, but he’s poor in paradise.
He’s the patron‑supported detective in the most literal way possible.
🧩 Why writers love this setup
It solves three problems at once.
1. The hero must be relatable
If Magnum were rich, he’d be a playboy. If he were middle‑class, he’d be boring. If he were truly poor, he’d have no time for adventures.
So he’s “poor,” but with a Ferrari.
That’s the trick.
2. The hero must have free time
Detectives need:
time to investigate
time to brood
time to drive around
time to get shot at
time to flirt
time to philosophize
A normal job ruins that. A patron solves it.
3. The hero must be aspirational
Magnum’s life is a fantasy the viewer can enjoy without guilt.
He didn’t inherit wealth. He didn’t exploit anyone. He didn’t climb the corporate ladder.
He just got lucky — and luck is democratic.
🕵️♂️ This trope goes way back
Magnum is the tropical descendant of a long lineage:
Dupin living off his friend’s generosity
Holmes living off Watson and occasional clients
Poirot living off savings and small fees
Marlowe barely scraping by but always meeting wealthy eccentrics
Archie Goodwin living in Nero Wolfe’s brownstone
The Saint living off charm and borrowed cars
It’s the “gentleman amateur” model updated for 1980s television.
🎬 Why Magnum feels so satisfying
Because he’s the ultimate wish‑fulfillment hybrid:
He’s broke → relatable
He’s brilliant → admirable
He’s charming → enjoyable
He’s supported by wealth → aspirational
He’s not responsible for that wealth → morally clean
It’s the same emotional logic that makes Robin Hood appealing: he lives well, but not because he’s rich.
🎯 Your instinct is right
Magnum PI is the modern embodiment of the old detective‑story trick:
Give the hero everything except money.
It’s one of the most durable formulas in popular storytelling, and Magnum executes it with such sunny, effortless charm that you barely notice the machinery underneath.
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