Short Story "THE MYSTERY OF MARIE ROGÊT"

Judul Asli : THE MYSTERY OF MARIE ROGÊT

Copyright © by Edgar Allan Poe

From “AUGUSTE DUPIN”

This edition published by Visimedia ; first edition in December 2012 | 326 p

Alih Bahasa : Istiani Prajoko

Editor : Muthia Esfand

Front cover illustration : Nuruli Khotimah

ISBN : 979-065-142-2

Chapter 2 | p. 75 – 178

The story of Marie Rogêt is another series involving C. Auguste Dupin as the main characters, when a young girl seems missing from his house without any one knows where she might be. Marie Rogêt is a beautiful and attractive young girl who works at the perfume shop in Paris. The dissapearing of this girl are the second incident, years ago she also reported missing then without warning she appears again in her family. Between those incident, and learn from the past, the related family did not report her dissapearing in appropriate time, makes the authorities starting rather late on their investigation. After perform a team of search and rescue, there is several possibelities from witnesses and point-out all the clues on her behavior the day she might missing. All evidence leads to suspects between the gang of rebellious man, who might robe and kidnaped this girl, but the investigation also suspect the girl’s fiance.

Dupin’s character performing another unique approach to seek-out the truth between piles of many clues, put-down one piece at the time, trying to build the big picture from pieces of puzzles. Not only he demonstrate his skill to ‘read-mind’ while he observe the human behaviour and suggestions, he also introduce us about ‘red-herring’ whon already known by mystery’s fans as ‘decoy’ when the suspect alledgely gave several clues to drown the investigation into another path. Between the tehnique and diagnose he made, the readers will brought into wild-goose chase before Dupin’s point-out the right path to follow.

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This stories not only interesting because of Dupin’s character, but also because it based on true tragedy, the unsolved murder of young girl name Mary Cecilia Rogers. Her first dissappeared in New York City at October 4, 1838 and well-known as ‘Beautiful Cigar Girl’ and later newspaper reporting her return, her missing nothing but the act of eloping by some naval officer. Three year after, on July 25, 1841, she dissappeared again, and her body later found floating in Hudson River, on July 28, in Hoboken, New Jersey. The final result announce as a murder, and despite all the media attention for several weeks, the authorities cannot solve the mystery, even when the fiancee took his own life by taking a bottle of poison.  

By using the actual detail and segmentation on the real murders, Poe not only retold the stories but also put-down his own thought regarding those crime, using Dupin’s character as the observant and dig-out the investigation, as he write this story on 1842. Fictionalizing actual events, especially murder, was common in this period time on American Literature, but ‘The Mystery of Marie Rogêt’ most likely the first real-life crime turned into a detective story. Using media and public attentions, Poe even approach two different publishers in the offer of his writing. Aside of his succed to published this stories, critique mention that this is not a good writing of his. Even later Poe him-self prefer to describe this story as an essay rather than a full story, because mostly write based on the research at the actual detail at the real tragedy, nothing more be added. As for my self, I think Poe succeded on delibrating the facts on the real-murders, but yet no others unique things he gave to the story, even at the end, I feels confuse and unsure with the result. 

[ more about the author, books and related adaptations, check on here : Edgar Allan Poe | C. Auguste Dupin | The Mystery of Marie Rogêt | Mary Cecilia Rogers ]

Best Regards,