The Purloined Letter

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The Purloined Letter
Author Edgar Allan Poe
Country Flag of the United States United States
Language English
Genre(s) Detective fiction short story
Publisher The Gift for 1845
Publication date December 1844
Media type Print (periodical)

"The Purloined Letter" is one of Edgar Allan Poe's detective stories. It is the third of the three stories featuring the detective C. Auguste Dupin; these stories are considered to be important early forerunners of the modern detective story. It first appeared in The Gift for 1845 (1844) and was soon reprinted in numerous journals and newspapers.

Contents

[edit] Plot summary

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

An unnamed narrator is meeting with the famous Parisian amateur detective C. Auguste Dupin, and discussing some of his most celebrated cases, when they are joined by the Prefect of the Police, a man known only as G—. The Prefect has a case he would like to discuss with M. Dupin.

A letter, the contents of which - if revealed - would be highly compromising, has been stolen from the private sitting room of the Queen. The culprit is the unscrupulous Minister D—. He was in the Queen’s room, saw the letter, and switched it for a letter of no importance. He has been arrogantly blackmailing the Queen for several months over its return.

The Prefect makes two deductions with which Dupin does not disagree:

1. The contents of the letter have not been revealed, as this would have led to certain circumstances that have not arisen. Therefore Minister D— still has the letter in his possession.
2. The ability to produce the letter at a moment’s notice is almost as important as possession of the letter itself. Therefore he must have the letter close at hand.

The Prefect says that he and his police detectives have made a most thorough search of the Ministerial hotel where D— stays and have found nothing. They have checked behind the wallpaper and under the carpets. The Prefect explains that the letter could be rolled up very small and hidden in a chair leg. Without destroying all the furniture, his men have examined the tables and chairs with microscopes and then probed the cushions with needles but have found no sign of interference.

Dupin asks the Prefect if he knows what he is looking for and the Prefect reads off a minute description of the letter, which Dupin memorizes. The Prefect then bids them good day.

A month later, the Prefect returns, still bewildered in his search for the missing letter. He is motivated to continue his fruitless search by the promise of a large reward, recently doubled, upon the letter’s safe return. He will pay 50,000 francs to anyone who can help him. Dupin asks him to write that check now and he will give him the letter. The Prefect is astonished but knows that Dupin is not joking. He writes the check and Dupin produces the letter. The Prefect quickly determines that it is genuine and races off to deliver it to the Queen.

Alone together again, the narrator asks Dupin how he managed to find the letter. Dupin explains how the Paris police are very competent within their limitations, but have underestimated who they are dealing with. The Prefect mistakes the Minister D— for a fool because he is a poet. For example, Dupin explains how an eight-year old boy made a small fortune from his friends at a game called "Odds and Evens." The boy was able to determine the intelligence of his opponents and play upon that to interpret their next move.

D— knew the police detectives were highly intelligent and would have assumed that the blackmailer would have concealed the letter in an elaborate hiding place. Realising this, D— then hid the letter in plain sight, but disguised.

Dupin visits the minister at his hotel. Complaining of weak eyes Dupin is wearing a pair of green spectacles, the true purpose of which is to disguise his eyes as he searches for the letter. In a cheap card rack hanging from a dirty ribbon, he sees a half-torn letter and knows he has found what he came for. Striking up a conversation with D— about a subject he knows the minister is interested in, Dupin examines the letter more closely. It does not look like the letter the Prefect described so minutely; the writing is different and it is sealed not with the "ducal arms" of the S— family, but with D’s monogram. Dupin notices that the paper is chafed as if the stiff paper was first rolled one way and then another. Dupin concludes that D— wrote a new address on the reverse of the stolen one, re-folded it the opposite way and sealed it with his own seal.

Dupin leaves a snuff box behind as an excuse to return the next day. Striking up the same conversation they had begun the previous day, D— is startled by a gunshot in the street. While he goes to investigate, Dupin switches D—'s letter for a duplicate. The man with the gun is in Dupin’s pay.

Dupin explains that he left a duplicate to ensure his ability to leave the hotel without D— suspecting his actions. As a political supporter of the Queen and old enemy of the Minister, Dupin also hopes that D— will unknowingly try to continue to use the power he no longer has, to his political downfall, and at the end be presented with an insulting note that also implies that Dupin was the thief: Un dessein si funeste, S'il n'est digne d'Atrée, est digne de Thyeste (If such a sinister design isn't worthy of Atreus, it is worthy of Thyestes).

[edit] Analysis

The epigraph "Nil sapientiae odiosius acumine nimio" (Nothing is more hateful to wisdom than excessive cleverness) given by Poe to Seneca was not found in his known work.

Dupin is not actually a professional detective. In "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," Dupin takes up the case mostly for amusement and even denies a financial reward. In "The Purloined Letter," however, Dupin specifically undertakes the case to pursue a financial reward. He is not motivated by pursuing truth, emphasized by the lack of information about the contents of the purloined letter.[1] Dupin's innovative method to solve the mystery is by trying to identify with the criminal.[2] The Minister and Dupin have equally matched minds, combining skills of both mathematician and poet,[3] and their battle of wits is threatened to end in stalemate. Dupin finally wins out, however, because of his moral strength: the Minister is "unprincipled," a blackmailer who obtains power by exploiting the weakness of others.[4]

Poe may have identified with both Dupin and D—. Like Poe, these two characters command both the power of analysis and a strong imagination.[5]

"The Purloined Letter" completes Dupin's tour of different settings. In "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" he travels through city streets; in "The Mystery of Marie Roget" he is in the wide outdoors; in "The Purloined Letter" he is in an enclosed private space.[6]

French linguist Jean-Claude Milner offered in Détections fictives , Le Seuil, collection « Fictions & Cie », 1985 supporting evidence that Dupin and D- are brothers, based on the final reference to Atreus and his twin brother, Thyestes.

[edit] Literary significance and criticism

In May of 1844 Poe wrote to James Russell Lowell that he considered it "perhaps the best of my tales of ratiocination" just before its first publication. Of Poe's three tales of ratiocination, "The Purloined Letter" is generally considered the best.[7][8] When it was republished in the 1845 edition of The Gift, the editor called it "one of the aptest illustrations which could well be conceived of that curious play of two minds in one person."[9]

The story was used by the French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan and the philosopher Jacques Derrida to present opposing structuralist interpretations. The two exchanged a series of letters concerning on the nature of desire.[citation needed]

[edit] Publication history

This story first appeared in The Gift: A Christmas and New Year's Present for 1844. Poe earned $12 for its first printing.[10] It was later included in the 1845 collection Tales By Edgar A. Poe.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Whalen, Terance. "Poe and the American Publishing Industry" collected in A Historical Guide to Edgar Allan Poe, J. Gerald Kennedy, editor. Oxford University Press, 2001. ISBN 0195121503 p. 86
  2. ^ Meyers, Jeffrey. Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Legacy. New York: Cooper Square Press, 1992. p. 155. ISBN 0815410387
  3. ^ Quinn, Arthur Hobson. Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. ISBN 0801857309 p. 421
  4. ^ Garner, Stanton. "Emerson, Thoreau, and Poe's 'Double Dupin'," collected in Poe and His Times: The Artist and His Milieu, edited by Benjamin Franklin Fisher IV. Baltimore: The Edgar Allan Poe Society, 1990. p. 141. ISBN 0961644923
  5. ^ Quinn, Arthur Hobson. Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. ISBN 0801857309 p. 421
  6. ^ Rosenheim, Shawn James (1997). The Cryptographic Imagination: Secret Writing from Edgar Poe to the Internet. Johns Hopkins University Press, 69. ISBN 9780801853326
  7. ^ Cornelius, Kay. "Biography of Edgar Allan Poe," collected in Bloom's BioCritiques: Edgar Allan Poe, Harold Bloom, ed. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 2002. p. 33 ISBN 0791061736
  8. ^ Quinn, Arthur Hobson. Edgar Allan Poe: A Critical Biography. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. ISBN 0801857309 p. 421
  9. ^ Phillips, Mary E. Edgar Allan Poe: The Man. Volume II. Chicago: The John C. Winston Co., 1926. p. 930–931
  10. ^ Ostram, John Ward. "Poe's Literary Labors and Rewards" in Myths and Reality: The Mysterious Mr. Poe. Baltimore: The Edgar Allan Poe Society, 1987. p. 40

[edit] External links

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Works of Edgar Allan Poe