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Why Sherlock Holmes Is Just as Original as C. Auguste Dupin

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Why Sherlock Holmes Is Just as Original as C. Auguste Dupin
Why Sherlock Holmes is Just as Original as C. Auguste Dupin

After reading two famous amateur detective stories by Edgar Allan Poe and two by Arthur Conan Doyle, I found myself questioning the originality of Doyle's stories as compared to Poe's stories. The stories in question are "The Purloined Letter" and "Murders in the Rue Morgue" by Poe and "The Adventure of the Speckled Band" and "A Scandal in Bohemia" by Doyle. All four of these stories had very exciting story lines and had very interesting mysterious aspects . Since the Poe stories of C. Auguste Dupin were written well before Doyle's stories of Sherlock Holmes, this leads to the question of whether or not Doyle's stories are genuinely original or if much of his stories ideas were copied from Poe. I believe that Doyle's detective stories are just as creative and original as Poe's detective stories. One of the biggest and probably most obvious similarities between the stories is that of the plots. In "The Purloined Letter", Dupin is contacted by the prefect to help the police retrieve a letter that had been stolen. This letter was of great importance to a certain person and if this letter was released to the public it would reveal things that could ruin that person's reputation. The prefect knows Minister D- stole the letter. He also knows that the letter must to be very close the minister who stole it because the ability to produce the letter when needed is just as important to the minister as actually having it. The police have searched the minister's hotel room and were not able to find the letter. Dupin then goes to the minister's hotel room and easily retrieves the letter because he knows that the minister would hide it in plain sight, since he knew the police would come looking for it. Many of these aspects of Poe's story are repeated in Doyle's A Scandal in Bohemia". In "A Scandal in Bohemia" Holmes is confronted by an important king to retrieve a letter and a photo of him with his ex lover that

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