Throughout Edgar Allen Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," it's quite clear that the narrator of the story holds Dupin with great admiration. Poe uses the narrator to allow his readers to feel as if they're taking part in Dupin's investigations. However, the reader, the narrator, and every other character in the book is left in the dark when it comes to Dupin's discoveries until he reveals them, because they are unable to come to those conclusions themselves. When Dupin asks his friend what he thinks about the murders he replies he, "could merely agree with all Paris" (51). This develops upon the fact that Dupin is a breed of his own, separated from the entirety of the population of Paris because of his knowledge and experience with detective work. It is also because Dupin is able to reach conclusions which a rational mind would not. .
This paper contends that Dupin's otherworldly knowledge and perfect combination of deductive reasoning and leaps of faith make him the ideal hero within the detective stories that Poe creates. What Paris considers as an "insoluble mystery "(51), Dupin considers a game. He in fact says that his foray into the investigation will, "afford us amusement."" (53) Even the narrator notes that this is a strange vernacular but does nothing else about it, most likely concluding that by using that diction, the investigation must be a trivial matter for a detective of Dupin's caliber. .
The initial way the reader learns what to consider the ideal hero is when Dupin himself begins to expound upon it. He begins by describing the Parisian police. The police are fine peacekeepers for fun of the mill crimes such as thievery or robbery, i.e. anything straightforward. However when something of this magnitude comes up, they come short. Dupin reasons that while they are, "extolled for their acumen, are cunning, but are no more." (52) He elucidates that the police follow the archaic forms of deduction, without any real leaps of faith.
