Tuesday, December 4, 2018

The Purloined Letter

Edgar Allan Poe

• Epigraph – “Nothing is more hateful to wisdom that excessive cleverness.” – Seneca

• Dupin is not a professional detective. The Murders in the Rue Morgue, he takes the
case up for amusement and refuses a financial reward. In this story, he works for
financial gain.

• The Purloined Letter is a tale of ratiocination which even Poe considers his best.

• There is a scholarly debate between French philosopher Jacques Derrida

(ambiguous narrative) and French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (sexual allegory)

• “If the case requires any type of reflection on his part, it should better be done in
dark.” Dupin when he doesn’t light the lamp.

• Dupin says that perhaps the simplicity of the case it what puts the prefect at fault.
‘mystery is a little too plain.’ and prefect finds it laughable.

• Prefect says that the manner in which Minister D. purloined the letter was more bold
than the display of cunning.

• When the queen wished to conceal the letter from the King, she tried to thrust it in
the drawer but in vain, and therefore she had no choice but to put it on table ‘open as
it was.’ This suggests the foreshadowing that the elements are best hidden in the
plain sight because they offer too vague of an explanation. However, the Minister
notices the letter (simplicity doesn’t skip his eyes).

• This also offers a connection between the similar thinking processes of both Minister
D. and Dupin.

• The lady, the rightful owner of the letter, saw the minister take her letter but she
couldn’t say anything as it would have revealed the letter from whom she had every
intention of concealing it.

• The narrator interjects and says that it is possible that minister has concealed the
letter other than his own place. This reflects that the thinking of Prefect and Narrator
are similar to some extent. He is more removed from Dupin’s mind than prefect’s.

• Dupin rejects the idea saying that it’s barely possible as it needs to be presented at
moment’s notice – “its susceptibility of being produced” (being destroyed)

1
 Tuesday, December 4, 2018
• Prefect says that even though Minister isn’t a fool, He is a poet, which he considers
to be ‘only one remove from the fool.’

• The Monsieur G. (Prefect) goes on to explain the minute details of his search which
seem thorough and impressive. The cleverness of prefect is too much to doom his
wisdom. (as mentioned in the epigraph)

• Dupin responds that the Monsieur should make a thorough search of the premises
again. Not to do the same and repeat the procedure but to find out what he did
wrong.

• The announcement made by Dupin (about finding the letter) comes as a shock to
both the narrator as well as to the prefect.

• Dupin reasons that even though prefect has ‘highly ingenious resources’ he is not
good reasoned. He gives example of a school boy and his game of marbles. (Maybe
this school boy is Dupin himself and he tells the story in retrospect)

• The schoolboy had his own principles and mechanics in order. The boy replicated the
expressions of his opponent as closely as he could and enacted on what thoughts he
had.

• The policemen consider their own intellect and greatness of mind and in this case
think about how they would hide the letter. Dupin says that this is the idea of the
mass and the things that the mass follows, it’s not reasonable.

• Dupin concludes that prefect conducted his search on the idea that the minister is a
fool, for he is a poet, for he thinks – “all fools are poets”. The narrator interjects that
he thinks that ministers is a mathematician and not a poet. Dupin suggests that he is
certainly a mathematician and a poet. If minister was simply just a mathematician,
he couldn’t have been successful at reasoning at all.

• This idea confuses narrator and he says that mathematical reasoning is considered
excellence at par. Dupin quotes Nicolas Chamfort – “It is safe to wager that every
public idea and every accepted convention is sheer foolishness, because it has
studied the majority.’

• Minister’s absence from the hotel, which the prefect assumed to be a simple matter
of convenience, was regarded by Dupin as ruse to distract the police. To make them
believe that the letter was not at the premises.

2
 Tuesday, December 4, 2018
• Dupin mentions the game of finding names on a map. Amateurs, Dupin says pick the
name with the smallest letters. Acc. to his logic, the hardest names to find are
actually those that stretch broadly across the map because they are so obvious.

• At the end, Dupin, replaces the original letter with a copy. Narrator finds this exercise
unnecessary and asks for the reason behind it. He explains that the minister had
queen under her power, now she has power over him, for he is still unaware that the
letter has left his possession, and therefore will act as if it were still in his.

• Dupin’s replacement of the original with a copy gives the Queen extra advantage over
the Minister.

• Inside the fake letter, then, Dupin inscribes a French poem – “So baneful a scheme, if
not worthy of Atreus, is worthy of Thyestes.” It is a Greek allusion in which Thyestes
seduces the wife of his brother, Atreus. Atreus murders the sons of Thyestes and
feeds them to their father. Thyestes deserves more punishment because he
committed the original wrong. Dupin considers his own deed as a revenge and thus,
morally justified.



Analysis :

• This story has no gothic elements, no gruesome description of dead bodies. This
offers the most effective use of ratiocination.

• This story is the opposite of The Murders in the Rue Morgue; the case is so difficult
to solve because it appears to be so simple. Here, it’s the opposite.

• Dupin uses psychological deduction and tries to reconstruct Minister’s thinking. He

has an acute psychological insight in his mind.

• The Prefect, is a contrast to Dupin. Dupin is concerned with psychological elements

in the case whereas G. is concerned with the physical evidence.

• The narrator is the mediator between Dupin and the reader. His reactions are similar
to those of the reader, and he is somewhat less astute to the reader so the reader
could feel superior.

• Such a narrator determines the amount of information which a reader receives. IN

this case, the narrator tells us everything but only as he receives it; because he does
not witness the case being solved.

• Attempting to determine the psychology of the criminal is an honorable tradition in

the detective fiction.

3
 Tuesday, December 4, 2018
• Dupin and Minister are more doubles than opposites. The revenge aspect of the
story, arguably derives from their threatening similarity.



Psychoanalytical Approach to The Purloined Letter :

• Bonaparte stresses that “purloined letter” is the story that symbolizes regret for
missing maternal phallus. Maternal phallus in Freudian understanding refers to the
perspective of child in which he considers mother as castrated.

• The child’s realization that he/she’s not the Mother’s entire world and she wants more
than and apart from her children. The child, according to Lacan wishes to be Phallus
for the mother.

• (Read More from the Book) 






OTHER IMPORTANT POINTS :

• The narrator takes the job of conveying and interpreting Dupin’s brilliance for the
average individual.

• The concept of alter-egos often appears in Poe’s short stories. Minister D. functions
as a criminal version of Dupin.

• The letter is a literary device around which Poe constructs a game of wits. The
content of the letter and its implications in the political sphere are not included
because the plot doesn’t need it.

• The Purloined Letter makes use of reason and logic, which he calls ratiocination.

• Since Minister is in the government, he knows the various methods and tactics of the
police in search operations. This is where prefect fails.

• Dupin functions in the story not only as a detective, but also an acquaintance of the
Minister and a person who has political sympathy with the queen.

• For Dupin, traditional systems of scientific logic which rely on set rules, do not always
help when solving cases about humans, who don not always play by these rules.

• In Purloined Letter, the exposition is conspicuous. The unnamed narrator of the story
acts on behalf of the reader and asks direct questions, which Dupin’s character is not
very likely to be asked.

~fin.~