Role Of Confessions In The Golden Age Detective Fiction

CONFESSION AND SURVEILLANCE IN GOLDEN AGE "And trust Hercule Poirot. He knows.”

The ubiquitous nature of ‘confession’ in today’s world is not merely restricted to the religious church practices, but also serves a significant part in literature. This includes various autobiographies, journals, confessional poetry, online blogs, television reality shows etc, in their popular use of the first person narrative. My paper intends to investigate the Golden Age Detective Fiction through the lens of confession by arguing that confessional practices are of paramount significance to the genre of crime fiction, and that detectives like Hercule Poirot are akin to pastor/priest figures, who elicit confessions both from their clients and criminals. In crime fiction, such confessions, not only render power to the detectives but also determine their power. The paper studies this very confessional activity in relation to a specific kind of intrusive or prying surveillance which extracts ‘truth’ not only from the criminal confessants but also reveals a lot about the confessor/detectives themselves. Thus, the detective serves as one of the most useful literary figures through which we can delve into the dynamic relationship between confession and surveillance. If, as the twentieth century French philosopher and historian Michel Foucault asserts - “Western man has become a confessing animal,” then the genre of detective