View that the Protagonist of Poe's Stories is Language Itself, and the Tale Structure of its Hero - Essay Example

Edgar Allan Poe is often cited with creating the genre of detective fiction that we know today because his stories would often include a detective who goes against what the conventional police officers believe should be done in a situation and uses his own ideas in order to solve a crime. In ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue,’ Poe does just that, by having his protagonist, C Auguste Dupin, solve a murder by looking more closely at the crime scene than the police and, therefore, solving a crime that they otherwise would not have solved. In ’William Wilson,’ Poe examines the mind of an individual who cannot come to terms with the existence of his alter ego. This internal battle causes Wilson to go insane and eventually attempt to murder a man who looks and acts just like him because he believes that this will reacquire his identity for him. Each of these stories has a protagonist that can be representative of language as a whole because each of them is battling against other forces who are trying to regulate their language. Dupin does not wish to be bound by the conventional rules of investigation, just like many do not like to be bound by the conventional rules of language, so he becomes an innovator in his field, which leads to him solving the crime. Wilson, on the other hand, believes that his own person language is being threatened and so he acts violently in order to protect it. Each of these characters represent language because language, while constantly evolving, must also be protected from external factors, otherwise we will all eventually end up speaking and writing exactly alike. In the story ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue,’ by Edgar Allan Poe, the protagonist is an expert detective named C Auguste Dupin. Poe is often credited with creating the genre of detective fiction that is present today, as he “introduced three common motifs of detective fiction: the wrongly suspected man, the crime in the locked room, and the solution by unexpected means. Dupin solved the crime by reading the evidence better than the police did and by noticing clues that they had neglected, thus highlighting the importance of inference and observation”1. This story’s use of language focuses on both Dupin and the narrator, who is an overly sympathetic figure and does not believe that Dupin can do any wrong. Dupin forms the plot of this story around his belief that the Paris police department has not done all that it can do to solve this crime. He uses his power of observation to recognize clues at the crime scene that others have seemingly overlooked. He is continually coming up with new methods of solving this crime and argues that the police have made many mistakes over the course of this story. He believes that the police are being distracted by the particularly brutal type of murder that this was and, therefore, are unable to look past this fact and into the real heart of the issue. By doing so, Dupin is able to trace the murderer’s actions step-by-step and eventually figure out what the murder’s true actions were, which leads to him solving the crime. The manner in which Dupin himself is language is that he crosses conventional boundaries in order to get to where he wants to be. This is a very common trait in language because the structure of language is not always what has been set forth in the past, but that does not mean that he end result will not be desirable. New concepts in language are constantly being invented, or at least utilized for the first time, and the same can be said to be true for Dupin. If Dupin had simply stayed to the same old structure that the Paris police employed, then this crime would not have been solved, so it is important to true new ways of utilizing language. At the same time, however, it is also important to not be reckless with this pursuit because many times, innovators end up doing more harm than good because of the unknown variables that exist around their ideas. The structure of this story is Dupin because his actions lead the events that transpire afterwards. This structure is furthered by the actions of the narrator, as he is clearly biased towards Dupin and does not believe that the hero can do anything wrong with his investigation. He never doubts or questions Dupin, which leads to the reader believing in the actions of Dupin as well. The narrator does attempt to give a fair account of what is happening but in the end, he believes in Dupin and, therefore, the structure of the story revolves around his actions. In the story ‘William Wilson,’ the protagonist, William Wilson, loses his personal identity when he meets a classmate who possesses the same name, physical attributes, and manner of speaking as he does. This causes Wilson to begin to hate this other man because Wilson believes that the other man possesses something that is his. This causes Wilson to attempt to murder the other man, which backfires because Wilson himself ends up dying at the end of the story. It is implied during this story that Wilson’s double might not have actually existed, but was rather a figment of his imagination that was caused by his own paranoia about his own identity. He believed that this other person had been attempting to take away his identity but in reality, this other person did not even exist. Wilson felt that as if in order to truly love himself, he had to hate the other person because he felt threatened by it. Wilson is the narrator in this story and, therefore, we are only able to see the events through his thoughts. This proves his madness, as he describes his own actions over the course of the story. It is possible to see the rivalry that Wilson has with himself and his alter ego and also possible to see that in the end, Wilson becomes his own insane alter ego, rather than the student that he was at the beginning of the story. Wilson is language in this story because he lacks one identity and has trouble accepting this. There are so many different manners of utilizing language present in today’s society and often times, people are threatened when their own personal style is copied. Wilson, in this case, was threatened by someone who was too similar to himself, which includes his manner of speaking, and this threatened him greatly. This shows that human beings feel the need to use language in their own manner, because they feel as if it is a manner of expressing themselves. This is why it is important that regional dialects are present, since they incorporate things that are important in certain areas of the world into them. The mental turmoil that arises from seeing something other than the self be that similar to the self causes a violent reaction in Wilson and the same can be said about language in certain parts of the world. People often associate language with culture and when a group of people believe that their language and culture could be in jeopardy, they will act out violently in order to protect it. Wilson believed that he was protecting his identity in this story, but all he was doing was harming himself, which eventually led to his death. The structure of this story is Wilson because of focuses on what is happening in his own mind. Much of the plot is centred on the insane thoughts that are occurring in Wilson’s mind and his reactions to these thoughts. The story follows Wilson as he battles against himself, which muddles his grasp on reality because it shows that he himself does not know what reality truly is. He battles his alter ego, which is something that is inside of him the entire time, for control of his own body and the structure of this story follows Wilson’s descent into madness. Each of these stories represents language in a different manner by saying different things about the identity of language. Dupin makes the point that we must not be entirely bound by traditional rules of language because there is much that can be learned an expressed by going outside of these predetermined boundaries, while Wilson shows how important differences between the language of individuals is in society. Language is something that must continually be explored because it is so vital for communication. As other things in the world change, language must change as well, but these changes must also happen within the individual so that individuals can continue to develop their own identities. This means that even though it is important that new forms of language be developed, it is equally important that these changes do not apply to everyone, because the uniqueness of the individual must also be present in any changes that are made. Read More