ort detective story written by Edgar Allan Poe that was first published in 1844. In 1845, the story was then republished in the short story collection ‘Tales by Edgar A. Poe.’ The meaning of ‘Purloined’ is to appropriate wrongfully and often by a breach of trust. Thus, the Puloined letter is a letter of importance whose content may cause huge controversy, mutiny, or disgrace to the Royal king, and that letter has been stolen.
Characters of The Purloined Letter:
The story is again told by the unnamed narrator who is a close friend of C. Auguste Dupin, a private detective and roommate of the narrator. Monsieur G- is the Perfect of the Paris Police who often seeks help from Dupin in various criminal cases though he is not very favorable to Dupin. Minister D- is a clever and cunning minister who steels a letter of importance with the intent to blackmail the owner of that letter and outperforms the Parisian police that tries to retrieve the letter. The unnamed Royal lady is the owner of that letter of importance who is presumably the Queen of France and the Man whom the letter concerned is presumably the King of France.
Summary of The Purloined Letter:
The story begins as the narrator is enjoying his leisure time in Paris along with his friend C. Auguste Dupin. The narrator is still thinking about the brilliance of his friend Dupin and how he applied reason to solve the mystery of The Murders in The Rue Morgue. One evening, the Perfect G- knocks on the door of the narrator's apartment and calls for Dupin. They invite him in and the narrator lights a candle.
Monsieur G- informs that he visited to discuss a case with Dupin. Dupin then extinguishes the candle as he believes that good thinking is better done in the dark. Also, he doesn’t want any outsider to notice that the Perfect is discussing official work with him. Perfect G- says that the case is very simple yet very odd and the police are finding it difficult to solve it. Dupin suggests that the simplicity of the case might be the reason for the difficulty in the solution. Monsieur G- says that if the narrator and Dupin swear secrecy, he is willing to discuss the case. The narrator and Dupin agree to it.
The Perfect says that a letter of importance has been stolen and the police know who stole the letter. He says that the letter belonged to a certain Royal lady of high regard. When she was first reading it, the man whom it concerned came into the royal apartments. Not wanting to arouse his suspicion, she put it down on a table next to her. At the same moment, Minister D- also visited the royal apartments for some official job and he noted the contents of the letter of importance while the Royal lady was entertaining the Man whom it concerned. Minister D- understood the seriousness of the situation and he quickly produced a duplicate letter resembling the letter of importance. He left the duplicate letter next to the original one as he began to talk of Parisian affairs. After some time, he asked for permission to leave, and before going out, he picked up the letter of importance in place of the duplicate one. The perfect says that now when Minister D- possesses that letter of importance, he is using its content to blackmail the royal lady. The perfect suggests that Minister D- has yet not made the content of the letter of Importance public, otherwise, it might have caused certain circumstances that have not yet occurred; and that D- must have it close at hand, ready to disclose at a moment's notice.
Dupin agrees to it and questions if the police have searched the apartment of the hotel where Minister D- is residing. The perfect informs that the Minister’s residence has been thoroughly searched without success. He recounts the search procedure, during which the police systematically searched every inch of the hotel. In addition, the letter could not be hidden on the Minister’s body because the police have searched him as well. The Perfect says that he is willing to spend more time finding out the letter because he has been offered a huge reward in return. Dupin then asks for the physical description of the letter and then he suggests to the Perfect that they should search the apartment of Minister D- again.
After one month, Perfect G- visits the apartment of the narrator again and informs that they have yet not found the letter. He says that the Royal lady is desperate to retrieve the letter as soon as possible and she has increased the amount of reward. The prefect says that he will pay 50, 000 francs to anyone who obtains the letter for him. Dupin smiles at this and asks the Perfect to write a cheque of 50,000 francs in his name. The Perfect gets startled but he writes the cheque on the spot. Dupin takes the receipt of the check and immediately, he hands over the letter of importance to the Perfect G-. Monsieur G- gets startled as he checks the letter and after being satisfied, he rushes off to return it to its rightful owner. The narrator puzzlingly looks at Dupin and then Dupin explains how he got the letter.
Dupin says that the police have skilled investigators but they work on their own principles and this often leads to their failure. He then discusses a game of ‘even and odd’ played by children. In this game, two young kids keep several small toys or beads hidden in their hands. Each player must then guess whether the number of beads or toys in the hands of others is even or odd. If the guess is right, the player gets one bead or toy from the other. If his guess is wrong, then the boy loses a toy or bead of his own. Dupin then says that a good player of this game does not make guesses on his intuition, rather, he notices the facial expressions of the other player and depends on his knowledge of the other player. When he has to make a guess, he tries to imitate the facial expression of the other player, trying to learn what he must be thinking and this offers him an insight if the other player has kept an even number of beads in his hands, or odd. Dupin says that the Parisian police did not adopt this strategy and hence, they failed in finding the letter.
Dupin then explains that Minister D- is very intelligent and cunning. He already knew where the police would try to locate the letter and hence, he avoided hiding the letter in the nooks and crannies of his apartment. Dupin then explains another game of children in which one player finds a name on a map and tells the other player to find it as well. Dupin says that often people think that trying with a name on the map written in very small letters will make them win but Dupin doesn’t agree with this. Dupin says that the hardest names to find are actually those that stretch broadly across the map because they are so obvious.
Dupin then informs the narrator that he visited Minister D-’s apartment and after surveying his apartment, he noticed a set of visiting cards hanging from the mantelpiece. Among those visiting cards, Dupin observed a letter that had a different exterior envelope that was previously described by the Perfect. But Dupin also noticed that the letter appeared as if it has been folded back on itself to change its appearance. Dupin was convinced that it is a letter of importance. To retrieve the letter back, he created an excuse for returning to the apartment again and deliberately left his snuff box in the apartment of Minister D-. The next day, he employed a man to create a commotion outside the window of Miniter D-’s apartment while he will be visiting there. When Dupin went into the apartment of Minister D- there was a huge uproar just outside his window. Minister D- naturally went to the window and looked outside and during that time, Dupin retrieved the letter of Importance. Not only that, but he also placed a duplicate of that letter backfolded on itself and placed it in the exact place. Thus, though the original letter has already been transferred to the rightful owner, Dupin says that Minister D- still believes that he holds the letter. Dupin then predicts that the Minister will embarrass himself when he acts in reliance upon the letter he falsely believes he still possesses. Then Dupin explains that once, Minister D- insulted him brutally and this will be his revenge against him. He informs that he wrote a few lines of a French poem in the duplicate letter which says, “So baneful a scheme, if not worthy of Atreus, is worthy of Thyestes.”
Analysis of The Purloined Letter:
Poe termed The Puoined Letter as his best story of Ratiocination. It was the third detective story by Poe that featured the recurring character of C. Auguste Dupin, the young French detective, and his friend, the narrator. This story is different from the other two previous detective stories by Poe in the sense that though the previous stories involved gory, brutal murders and elements of fear, The Purloined Letter doesn’t involve any mutilation and gory crimes, rather, it focuses on the relationship between C. Dupin and the French Police and highlights the superiority of the savvy private eye of Dupin against the ineffectual established order.
In The Murders in The Rue Morgue, Dupin was not a professional detective but he pursues the case for amusement and to help the clerk who once helped him. Furthermore, he was interested in revealing the truth. In The Purloined Letter, however, Dupin undertakes the case for financial gain and personal revenge. He is not motivated by pursuing truth, emphasized by the lack of information about the contents of the purloined letter. This suggests his professional attitude towards maintaining the trust of his client (The Perfect directly and the Royal Lady indirectly), who do not wish the content of the letter to be made public.
Dupin describes Minister D- as very intelligent and cunning. He appears to be an equivalent opposite of Dupin. Still, Dupin outsmarts Minister D- because while Dupin is principled and honest, Minister D- is unprincipled and corrupt. Some literary critics suggest that Minister D- is a brother of Dupin (that’s why D-) and that is why Dupin gave the example of Atreus and Thyestes. In Greek mythology, Atreus was the king of Mycenae. His younger brother was Thyestes. Thyestes seduced Atreus’s wife, Aërope. When Atreus came to know about it, Thyestes was outcasted. To avenge this, Thyestes sent Pleisthenes (Atreus’s son, whom Thyestes had brought up as his own), to kill Atreus, but the boy was himself slain, unrecognized by his father. When Atreus came to know about his son’s murder by his own hands, he recalled Thyestes to Mycenae in apparent reconciliation. At a banquet, Atreus served Thyestes the flesh of Thyestes’ own sons, whom Atreus had slain in vengeance.
The example suggests that Dupin is the elder brother of Minister D-.
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