Edgar Allan Poe's unusually common use of orangutans in his short stories is no secret. In The Murders in the Rue Morgue, the orangutan turns out to be the murderer who deprived Madame L'Espanaye and her daughter of their lives. His actions are portrayed as extremely – and perhaps uncomfortably – humane. His cries use a "high voice [like] that of a man", but his language is obviously not recognized.[1] Assuming that the murder occurred in chronological order, it is suggested that the girl's body was "stuck firmly in the chimney", while her mother's was "thrown headlong through the window", as if the bully realized that his actions were far from worthy and desired. to hide the bodies of deceased women.[2] Therefore, the orangutan seems to have uncanny similarities with our species in that it can communicate, even if not efficiently, and it can somehow distinguish between good and evil. Still in Hop Frog, the figure of the orangutan serves as a disguise for the king and his seven ministers. They are "saturated with tar" and covered with "linen" in order to accurately represent these beasts.[3] The orangutan appears as an unwanted and frightening creature. However, given that the eight important men remain unidentified, disguised as they were, the figure of the orangutan does not appear that much different from that of the human being. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay In another of Poe's short stories, Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether, the reader does not encounter human beings disguised as orangutans with absolute certainty. Nevertheless, the manner in which the sane asylum workers were treated and how they were all "tarred, then carefully feathered" by the insane patients, is reminiscent of Hop Frog, where the imbecile outwitted wiser men and degraded them to the level of the orangutan.[4] The narrator is indeed thinking of “Chimpanzees, Ourang-Outangs or large black baboons of the Cape of Good Hope”.[5] Although the guards are not specifically dressed as orangutans, they still pose as a cross between several species of the ape family. The reader may notice a pattern between the human being going through a crisis where his intelligence and morality are called into question, and his sudden metamorphosis into an orangutan. This happened too often in Poe's stories to be considered simply part of the plot without much significance. In what way could the destitute human being be linked to the orangutan? What is the significance of this analogy? In his essay “Manipulating the Perceptual Politics of Identity in Great Expectations,” university professor Peter J. Capuano highlights how deeply the Victorians were concerned with “the material characteristics of the body” and what the message is which is transmitted there. evoked through the shape of their bodily features.[6] In Great Expectations, Dickens exaggerates this Victorian anxiety by including characters like Pip who compares his status in life with that of Estella by studying her hands. According to Capuano, this sudden interest in the body comes from the loss by humans of their "privileged status" of superiority over animals, while Charles Darwin's theory suggests that in fact human beings derive from the family of monkeys.[7] This revelation led to an identity crisis, a deflation of the human ego, and, unsurprisingly, a curiosity about how apes "looked and behaved," just like thehumans.[8] Needless to say, the Victorians dreaded facing a life in which human beings were no longer at the top of the biological spectrum, and they would have nothing to do with and avoid any association with these creatures. They worked to reassert their power over all other animals and instead used terms related to monkeys, gorillas, orangutans, etc. in order to insult the races they considered inferior.[9] So how does this discovery relate to Poe and his treatment of human beings as orangutans? In a letter to George W. Eveleth, a medical student in Maine, Poe states that it is the heart that makes us human and without which man would become a "brute or a god".[10] Therefore, Poe seems to believe that if one does not respect the moral standards of humanity, one lives on par with apes; a statement that would not sit well with his contemporary audience. Yet his many instances where the human is reduced to an orangutan suggest that Poe is deliberately putting his readers in distress, in order to show them how close they are to the brutes. Why is Poe so determined to make people feel this way? What is the main motive behind his accusation of lack of humanity among his generation? The most likely theory behind this reasoning stems directly from Poe's life. Through his letters, we learn of the trials he endured after his adoptive father John Allan disowned him and refused to contact him. From the letters that Poe wrote to Allan, we realize how the latter deprived Poe of the money necessary to continue his studies, which led him to sink into terrible vices like gambling. Poe was deprived of the love that a child should receive from his father. He lived in poverty and was always short of money. He witnessed the passing of his beloved wife, Virginia. He endured several quarrels with several other writers and critics and had to experience, towards the end of his life, the bitterness of unrequited love. Could it be that he is trying to reaffirm his dignity by comparing these people to bullies? Perhaps this comparison with orangutans was inspired by the Victorians' desire to be as different as possible from orangutans and apes in general, and so Poe took this opportunity to express his opinion on the 'humanity. Despite being poor, unloved, and even considered crazy, Poe worked hard to get revenge by demonstrating through his writings how similar human beings are to orangutans. This theory seems viable because in The Rue Morgue Murders and Hop Frog as well as in The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether, the orangutan doubles as a human being whose behavior is less than human. In The Murders in the Rue Morgue, the orangutan is a murderer who physically deprives others of life, just as Poe is deprived of his own through lack of financial means and neglect. In Hop Frog and The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether, it was the orangutans who mocked those deemed inferior and perhaps stupid, much like the fact that Poe was often not taken seriously due to rumors about his madness and his behavior. insobriety.Poe may have manipulated the Victorians' insecurity about their very existence and included it in his tales in order to mock and amplify people's flaws. Perhaps he was seeking to transfer the anger and shame ruthlessly generated by other people onto the same individuals who didn't like him so much. The distress is further heightened by the very nature of his short stories, as he deals with delicate subjects such as death, murder and horror, in order to add to the vulnerability of his "enemies" and 1847 2017].