The Oval Portrait The Oval Portrait "The Oval Portrait" is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe involving the disturbing circumstances surrounding a portrait in a chateau. It is one of his shortest stories, filling only two pages in its initial publication in 1842. The tale begins with an injured narrator (the story offers no further explanation of their impairment) seeking refuge in an abandoned mansion in the Apennines. The narrator spends their time admiring the paintings that decorate the strangely shaped room and perusing a volume, found upon a pillow, that describes them. Upon moving the candle closer to the book, the
The Murders in the Rue Morgue and a leap to a set of open window shutters. Showing an unusual tuft of hair he recovered from the scene, and demonstrating the impossibility of the daughter being strangled by a human hand, Dupin concludes that an "Ourang-Outang" (orangutan) killed the women. He has placed an advertisement in the local newspaper asking if anyone has lost such an animal, and a sailor soon arrives looking for it. The sailor offers to pay a reward, but Dupin is interested only in learning the circumstances behind the two murders. The sailor explains that he captured the orangutan while in Borneo and