The corpse robber

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The Body Snatcher ( Engl. The Body Snatcher ) is a horror story of the Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson , 1884 in the Christmas special edition of the Pall Mall Gazette was published.

In novelistic form, Stevenson addresses two cases of heinous crime in the time of the anatomist Robert Knox : the theft of corpses and the procurement of corpses through murders .

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The drunk Scot Fettes, an obviously medically educated old man, meets the wealthy London doctor Dr. Wolfe Macfarlane. The anonymous first-person narrator lures the story of his youth out of Fettes. Fettes had studied medicine with Mr. K. in Edinburgh and was responsible for the procurement of anatomical raw materials . That means that Fettes had to pay the suppliers from Mr. K's till and had to be silent. Sometimes the student Fettes had been amazed at the strange freshness of the corpses . When the guys bring him Jane Galbraith, a girl he was joking with yesterday, Fettes realized with a shudder that he was paying murderers for "his" corpses. The student examines the dead woman and discovers signs of strangulation . Dr. Wolfe Macfarlane, one of the young assistants Dr. Ks, Fettes expresses his firm conviction. All corpses were obtained through murder - with one exception. When the “delivery” stalls, Fettes and Macfarlane, armed with spades, drive out into the country in a horse and cart and vilify village cemeteries with nefarious work .

Time goes by. Sometimes Fettes drinks with his crony. On the occasion, he observes how a certain health-brimming Mr. Gray leads the confident Macfarlane on the lead. The next day Macfarlane delivers poor Gray's body to Fettes. For the sake of order, the murderer demands the usual amount of money. Fettes reluctantly pays out of Mr. K's till and becomes hopelessly entangled in the gruesome business. Gray's limbs are distributed to the anatomists for further dissection. When Mr. K. once again complains about the lack of corpses, the young Doctors Fettes and Macfarlane set out for Glencorfe via Penicuik and Peebles . At night the two men of the Resurrection tear the sackclothed body of a recently buried peasant woman from the grave and roar - the body bag in their midst - over Fisher's Tryst to Edinburgh. On the way near Auchenclinny, Fettes is afraid of the unholy burden . Stevenson writes: ... a horror ... captured his brain ... Fetten insists on opening the sack. Strange and creepy - this is where Mr. Gray's corpse hides.

shape

Stevenson framed his story about two young doctors with a visit to a restaurant by the two aged protagonists in Debenham. The eponymous corpse robber is Fettes. He always gets a remorse and, unlike Macfarlane, he is a vile robber, but not a murderer.

The narrative reference to the murderers Fettes had to pay for on behalf of Mr. K. has not been worked out.

For mentioned in the article head novelistic character: Stevenson has the story on a "strange, unheard-of event" ( Goethe's novellas written definition) out. The contents of the body bag make the reader wonder immediately after reading it. How and why did the dismembered remains of Mr. Gray - neatly put together again, as it were - got into the grave of the farmer's wife? The fantastic Stevenson gives the answer in the text by preparing his punchline: "... more firmly in Fettes' mind the thought that something supernatural had happened, that an unknown change would have taken place in the dead body ..."

Film adaptations

German-language literature

expenditure

Secondary literature

Web links

English

Remarks

  1. Behind the I is certainly Stevenson himself.
  2. Stevenson may mean Auchendinny .
  3. Edition used.

Individual evidence

  1. Reinbold, p. 153, 17th Zvu
  2. engl. The Body Snatcher
  3. Edition used, p. 110, 4th Zvu
  4. engl. Debenham
  5. Robert Knox is meant, see edition used, p. 110, 8th Zvu and explanation, p. 539, 9th Zvu
  6. engl. Gig
  7. engl. Peebles
  8. engl. resurrectionists (see also edition used, p. 540, explanations, 1st entry)
  9. Edition used, p. 131, 10. Zvo
  10. Edition used, p. 130, 11. Zvo
  11. The Body Snatcher ( The Body Snatcher )
  12. engl. The Body Snatcher
  13. engl. Toby Robertson
  14. engl. Trevor Baxter
  15. engl. David Buck
  16. ^ Spanish El ladrón de cadáveres
  17. span. Raúl stations
  18. ^ Spanish Andrés Mejuto