Eureka: A Prose Poem Poe's fiction work, including attempts at breaking beyond the obstacle of death and specifically characters who return from death in stories like "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "Ligeia". Similar to his theories on a good short story, Poe believes the universe is a self-contained, closed system. In coming to his conclusions, Poe uses ratiocination as a literary device, through his character C. Auguste Dupin, as if Poe himself were a detective solving the mystery of the universe. "Eureka", then, is the culmination of Poe's interest in capturing truth through language, an extension of his interest in cryptography.
C. Auguste Dupin The two met by accident while both were searching for "the same rare and very remarkable volume" in an obscure library. This scene, the two characters searching for a hidden text, serves as a metaphor for detection. They promptly move to an old manor located in "Faubourg Saint-Germain". For hobbies, Dupin is "fond" of enigmas, conundrums, and hieroglyphics. He bears the title "Chevalier", meaning that he is a knight in the Légion d'honneur. Dupin shares some features with the later gentleman detective, a character type that became common in the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. He is acquainted with police