The Purloined Letter (Summary & Analysis)

The Purloined Letter

Edgar Allan Poe

 

Important Characters:

The talker - Dupin's friend UN agency enjoys sitting with him and taking note of however he solves cases

C. Auguste Dupin - French PI UN agency excels at examining cases and finding them principally from at intervals his own residence, wins a year's remuneration from the executive for getting the missing letter

The executive - the pinnacle of the French local department UN agency explains the case to Dupin and his friend and so pays Dupin for finding it for him

The Minister - the criminal UN agency scarf the letter from the girl of royalty and hid it in plain sight in his home

Plot summary:

The unknown talker is discussing with the known Parisian amateur detective C. Auguste Dupin a number of his most celebrated cases after they square measure joined by the executive of the Police, a person called G—. The executive features a case he would love to debate with Dupin.

A letter has been purloined from the chamber of Associate in Nursing unknown lady by the unscrupulous Minister D—. it's same to contain compromising data. D— was within the area, saw the letter, and switched it for a letter of no importance. He has been blackmailing his victim.

The executive makes 2 deductions with that Dupin doesn't disagree:

    The contents of the letter haven't been unconcealed, as this might have junction rectifier to bound circumstances that haven't arisen. Therefore, Minister D— still has the letter in his possession.

 the flexibility to provide the letter at a moment's notice is sort of as necessary as ownership of the letter. Therefore, he should have the letter shut at hand.

The executive says that he and his police detectives have searched the Ministerial edifice wherever D— stays and have found nothing. They checked behind the wallpaper and underneath the carpets. His men have examined the tables and chairs with magnifying glasses and so probed the cushions with needles however have found no sign of interference; the letter isn't hidden in these places. Dupin asks the executive if he is aware of what he's seeking and also the executive reads off a second description of the letter, that Dupin memorizes. The executive then bids them bye-bye.

A month later, the executive returns, still confused in his hunt for the missing letter. he's intended to continue his vain search by the promise of an oversized reward, recently doubled, upon the letter's safe come, and he can pay fifty,000 francs to anyone UN agency will facilitate him. Dupin asks him to write down that check currently and he can provide him the letter. The executive is amazed, however is aware of that Dupin isn't jocular. He writes the check and Dupin produces the letter. The executive determines that it's real and races off to deliver it to the victim.

Alone along, the talker asks Dupin however he found the letter. Dupin explains the Paris police square measure competent at intervals their limitations, however have underestimated with whom they're dealing. The executive mistakes the Minister D— for a fool, as a result of he's a author. for instance, Dupin explains however Associate in Nursing eight-year-old boy created alittle fortune from his friends at a game known as "Odds and Evens". The boy was ready to verify the intelligence of his opponents and play upon that to interpret their next move. He explains that D— knew the police detectives would have assumed that the extortionist would have hid the letter in Associate in Nursing elaborate topographic point, and therefore hid it in plain sight.

The letter purloined once more

Dupin says he had visited the minister at his edifice. protestant of weak eyes he wore a try of inexperienced spectacles, actuality purpose of that was to disguise his eyes as he looked for the letter. during a low-cost card rack hanging from a grimy ribbon, he saw a half-torn letter and recognized it because the letter of the story's title. putting up a voice communication with D— a few subject within which the minister is interested, Dupin examined the letter a lot of closely. It didn't gibe the letter the executive represented thus minutely; the writing was totally different and it had been sealed not with the "ducal arms" of the S— family, however with D—'s symbol. Dupin noticed  that the paper was galled as if the stiff paper was 1st rolled a way and so another. Dupin over that D— wrote a brand new address on the reverse of the purloined one, re-folded it the other approach and sealed it along with his own seal.

Dupin left a snuff box behind as Associate in Nursing excuse to come future day. putting up constant voice communication that they had begun the previous day, D— was surprised by a gunfire within the street. whereas he visited investigate, Dupin switched D—'s letter for a replica.

Dupin explains that the gunfire distraction was organized by him which he left a replica letter to make sure his ability to go away the edifice while not D— suspecting his actions. If he had tried to seize it brazenly, Dupin surmises D— may need had him killed. As each a political supporter of the Queen Associate in Nursingd previous enemy of the Minister [who had done an evil deed to Dupin in national capital years before], Dupin additionally hopes that D— can try and use the ability he now not has, to his political downfall, Associate in Nursingd at the tip be given with an insulting note that suggests Dupin was the thief: United Nations dessein si funeste, S'il n'est digne d'Atrée, EST digne Diamond State Thyeste (If such a sinister style is not merit Atreus, it's merit Thyestes). 

Literary significance and criticism:

In could 1844, simply before its 1st publication, Edgar Allen Poe wrote to James Russell Lowell that he thought-about "The stolen Letter" "perhaps the most effective of my tales of ratiocination."When it had been republished within the Gift in 1845, the editor known as it "one of the aptest illustrations that might preferably be planned of that curious play of 2 minds in one person."

Poe's story angry a discussion among literary theorists within the Sixties and Nineteen Seventies. Jacques Lacan argued in Ecrits that the content of the Queen's letter is extraneous to the story which the right "place" of the form (the letter itself) is set by the symbolic structure within which it exists and is displaced, 1st by the Minister and so by Dupin. {jacques Diamond Staterrida|Derrida|Jacques Derrida|philosopher|literary critic} more established Lacan's reading in "Le Facteur de la vérité" ("The provider of Truth"), noting what Lacan "missed" and suggesting that it's not that the letter lacks that means, as Lacan claimed, however that Lacan created the dearth the that means. The truth, for literary critic, is that the letter may be a castration of the King by the Queen, that Lacan cannot see/abide/is blind to. Lacan's structuralist reading and Derrida's deconstructive reading angry a response by Barbara Johnson, UN agency mediate the talk by suggesting that the letter belongs right along to the Queen as a substitute for a phallus.

Donald E. Pease suggests that Lacan "equates the possession of a letter—defined as a 'lack' of content—with 'literal' as critical 'symbolic' castration, thence the odor of the female. In alternative words the 'possession' of the dearth otherwise displaced by language identifies the someone with the dearth 'she' thinks she possesses. thus trait exists as Associate in Nursing 'effect' of the delusion of possession of an absence otherwise displaced (as a masculine effect?) by the endless purloining of the letter."

The debate up to the mid-1980s is collected during a useful tho' incomplete volume,The stolen Edgar Allen Poe. the amount doesn't embrace, for example, Richard Hull's reading supported the work of Michel Jean Bernard Leon Foucault, within which he argues that "'The stolen Letter' may be a smart text for questioning the metalinguistic claim that artists cannot avoid doing police investigation, as a result of it's a discourse on poetry's superiority over police investigation."Slavoj Žižek asks "So why will a letter perpetually make its destination? Why might it not—sometimes at least—also fail to succeed in it?"Hollis Robbins critiques literary critic for his own sightlessness to nationalism in prefacing his reading of "The stolen Letter" with a reading of "The Emperor's New Clothes": "In Derrida's read, each Poe's story and Andersen's feature a king whose manhood is imperiled, UN agency is enclosed by habit-driven and ineffectual civil servants, and UN agency is saved by a private UN agency sees what's obvious. ... each save the crown from additional embarrassment. ... there's ne'er a matter that a king might or ought to fall from grace."