This article is an attempt to rationalize consequently the existence of the “Ourang‐Outang” as the murderer in Poe's short story “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” from within the structure of the story. One could even say that it is an attempt to prove “categorically” the necessity of the ape as murderer.In order to do this, the article resorts to the conceptualization and the philosophical underpinning of theGestaltof the detective as an aesthete. Such an understanding of the detective and its rationalization literally provokes the connection of two, each other unknown contemporaries: Poe and Kierkegaard; and ‐ last yet not least ‐ it evokes another romantic: E. T. A. Hoffmann. Other intellectual luminaries, like T. W. Adomo and his friend S. Kracauer, helped to blaze the trail; and, of course, a historical and political view helped to keep “things” in line.Not only does the presented approach help to explain the ape rationally, it also helps to rationalize the unusually young age of Auguste Dupin himself. The explanation of his character is ‐together with the enigma of the ape ‐ one of the most obscure issues in Poe's detective fiction. This treatment of Poe's detective and the ape tries to realize critically Poe's understanding of