Sherlock Holmes and the Murders in the Rue Morgue

Last night, I read Edgar Allan Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" for the first time.  I remember reading somewhere that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle used "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" as an inspiration for the Sherlock Holmes stories, but now that I've read it, I can actually see how many similarities there are.  This is a brief account of a few of them.

1. "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" is not narrated by Dupin in the same way that most of the Sherlock Holmes stories are not narrated by Holmes.  For both, this narrative distance allows the reader to feel more suspense and be more surprised when the solution to the mystery is revealed.
2. Early in "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," Dupin traces the narrator's thoughts.  Holmes does the same thing to Watson at the beginning of "The Adventure of the Cardboard Box."  He even references Poe's work - "'You remember,' said he, 'that some little time ago when I read you the passage in one of Poe's sketches in which a close reasoner follows the unspoken thoughts of his companion, you were inclined to treat the matter as a mere tour-de-force of the author.'"
3. A direct quote from a newspaper article lasts for about six pages in "The Murders in the Rue Morgue."  The inclusion of primary sources frequently occurs in the Sherlock Holmes stories too.
4. The mystery in "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" revolves around two murders in a locked room, which is a situation that also occurs in a few Sherlock Holmes stories.
5. Like Dupin, Holmes has a relationship with the police that is not exactly official but that does provide more access than a regular citizen would have.
6. At the very end, Dupin places an advertisement in the newspaper, which is a tactic that Sherlock Holmes also uses rather frequently.

I also noticed a vague connection between the settings of the Sherlock Holmes stories and "The Murders in the Rue Morgue."  In "A Study in Scarlet," Watson describes London as "that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained."  In "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," the narrator explains that he became acquainted with Dupin after they were both searching for the same rare book.  In both cases, the setting is central.  London is the center of the British Empire, and "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" seems to describe Paris as the center of intellectuals.  Later in "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," international shipping becomes an important factor, which illustrates Paris as an important world city, much like London.

Obviously, Doyle did come up with a lot of his own ideas for the Holmes stories and expanded upon the original influence of Poe, but there are a lot of similarities between the two.

For the Ambiguity of Case

A few days ago while reading Les Misérables, I came across this sentence:

He wore his working-man’s waistcoat, brown linen trousers, and his cap with the long visor hid his face.

I really like this sentence because of its grammatical structure.  As far as what it's saying, it's not too interesting, but the underlying structure is fascinating and says a lot about English's relatively simple case arrangement.

In this sentence, cap is simultaneously the third in the list and the subject of the second clause.  You could just as easily write, "He wore his working-man's waistcoat, brown linen trousers, and his cap with the long visor" and "His cap with the long visor hid his face."  But the two clauses are combined.  And since his cap with the long visor works both as direct object and subject, it gives the whole sentence a nice, uninterrupted flow.

I got thinking about this some more, and I didn't know whether to attribute this to Hugo or the translator C.E. Wilbur.  Then I realised that the grammatical structure could give me a clue.  English doesn't inflect its nouns to indicate case.  You could come across a word like cap, and you wouldn't know whether it's in the nominative case or accusative case (or any other case).  In some languages, nouns are inflected to indicate their case.  But since it's been about five years since I last took a French class, I couldn't remember if French did this or not.  So I looked it up, and it turns out the French doesn't (though, like English, it does inflect its pronouns to indicate case).  So I still couldn't tell if this grammatical structure was the work of Hugo or Wilbur.

However!  This still illustrates something.  Since I started learning about languages that inflect their nouns to indicate cases, I've come to view those that don't (particularly English) as, well, sort of inferior.  After all, one of the points of grammar is to communicate clearly, and when the language you're using doesn't differentiate between cases, your sentences can be interpreted in ways that you hadn't intended.

But this sentence kind of argues against that clarity.  The ambiguity of cap's case creates this wonderful flow between the two clauses.  With a language that differentiates cases, that would not be possible.  It's only because English doesn't inflect its nouns to indicate cases that something like this is even possible; in a language that does, the two clauses would have to be split because you could not inflect a noun in two different ways simultaneously.  Here, that ambiguity of case creates an uninterrupted rhythm.

The Common Gatz

This post contains spoilers for The Great Gatsby.

I saw The Great Gatsby movie a few months ago when it came out, and I was annoyed at some of the parts that didn't make it into the movie.  At the time, I didn't really know why I was so annoyed, but I think I figured it out this morning.

I really liked the part in the book after Gatsby's death when his father comes.  Specifically how Nick constantly and erroneously calls him "Mr. Gatsby" instead of "Mr. Gatz."  I think Gatsby's changing his name from James Gatz to Jay Gatsby is a really significant point that the movie should have included.*  It simultaneously changes and hides who he is, and Gatsby's appearance and reputation are huge aspects of the story.

He changes his first name from "James" to "Jay," shortening it.  In a way, by doing this Gatsby rejects his past and the poverty that it includes.  He wants to be this rich, impressive guy in order to win Daisy's love, and completely switching over to opulence and wealth is one way to do that.  He changes his last name from "Gatz" to "Gatsby," embellishing it.  Again, this functions as a way to appear elite.  "Gatz" sounds normal, but "Gatsby" sort of makes you pay attention to it.  (Though that could be just because it's been coupled with "great" for so long....)

In any case, Gatsby's changing his name is just an-other example of how he changes himself.  He rejects the common and strives for the extravagant in his attempt to impress Daisy.  In the novel, after Gatsby's death, the reader finds out that he wasn't really Jay Gatsby, he was just James Gatz.  That heightened persona is totally deflated, showing Gatsby for who he really is.  But the way it's done in the movie, Jay Gatsby just disappears into death, and his true identity is never really revealed because Nick never meets Mr. Gatz.  I think it's a more tragic ending to have the self you tried to hide exposed than it is to just be ignored.

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*I saw the movie once three months ago, so it may have included this and I've just forgotten about it.  In any case, I still feel that Nick's meeting Mr. Gatz illustrates Gatsby's change in a way that no-thing else does.