The Murders in the Rue Morgue

The proverbial lynchpin that enables Monsieur Dupin to solve the murder case, ironically, is found in the literal structure of the nails that lock the victims’ windows. Recognizing the window as the literal mode to perception, the material to let light pass through, Poe capitalizes on the window’s function. The reader first catches the window motif through Dupin’s observation that “most men, in respect to himself, wore windows in their bosoms” (4). His statement is not a compliment to the company he keeps, for how could a window hanging at chest level be useful to the wearer. His claim also implies that the way in which windows are positioned work much like a spy glass. It will determine where truth will be found. Poe cleverly crafts his reference to a window at the onset of the story to foreshadow the object that becomes integral to identifying the murderer.

The window motif also engages in a more literal way. Dupin’s meticulous attention to the apartment windows’ mechanisms illustrate the ideology repeated in both the preface and later in the narrative, namely, “what is only complex is mistaken (a not unusual error) for what is profound” (1) and “the common error of confounding the unusual with the abstruse” (17). Essentially, Poe compares a cracked nail that appears to be whole to a faulty deduction held up by mistaken presuppositions. Both have the form of a steadfast reality but lead to a malfunction or wrong conclusion. Like the initial confusion one feels when given a new problem, a window that self-closes is unusual, but after examining its inner workings, it is not at all complicated.