The Purloined Letter Summary

How It All Goes Down

On a windy, fall night in Paris, sometime in the 1800s, the narrator and C. Auguste Dupin are smoking pipes in the dark, thinking their thoughts. Suddenly, G—, the head of the Paris police, enters. Do they want to hear a mystery? Do they ever! So G— tells a story:

A few months ago the royal lady (probably the queen) gets a letter. She’s in her sitting room reading it when another royal person walks in (probably the king). She wants to hide the letter from him, but she can’t get it into the desk drawer fast enough. Instead, she puts it on the desk, with the address showing.

In strolls dangerous Minister D—. He notices who the letter is from (the readers aren’t told), notices that the royal lady is acting funny, and realizes she wants to hide the letter from the royal man. Right in front of everyone, D— switches the royal lady’s letter with one of his own and walks out. The lady can’t stop him, because she’s afraid D— will show her letter to the royal man.

So, now he’s using the letter to make the queen grant some vague but no doubt nefarious political wishes. Enter G—, whom she’s called in to find the letter for her. Thinking that D— must have the letter either on his body or in his home, G— has searched and search—like, every night for the past three months—and still found nothing.

Dupin takes an interest, asking G— to describe the letter, inside and out. Finally, G— leaves, resolved to search again. About a month later, he comes back. Still no luck. By this point, he’s totally frustrated and offers to pay fifty thousand francs of his own money to whomever can find that letter.

Great! Dupin says—and hands over the letter.

After G— leaves (50,000 francs poorer, but stoked about the promotion this probably means for him), Dupin tells our narrator how he found the letter:

He knows that D— is smart, definitely smart enough to have known how and where G— would search for the letter. He concludes that D— probably hid the letter out in the open, where G— (who’s not so smart) would never think to look.

So he waltzes over to D—’s house for a friendly little visit, wearing green glasses to hide his eyes. He sees the letter, disguised as another letter, in an organizer box hanging from the fireplace. The next day he returns with a copy of the disguised letter. Dupin then creates a distraction in the street, so that D— wouldn’t notice as he swaps the copy for the original. The final touch? Inside the fake letter, Dupin wrote a snide little note to gloat about how he’s outsmarted D—.

The Purloined Letter “The Purloined Letter” Summary

Our story begins in Paris, in the fall, in an unspecified year of the 1800s.

Paris in the fall. This is off to a good start.

It’s just after dusk. We’re in the library of C. Auguste Dupin’s fourth-story apartment.

We’d like to know how much you have to pay to get an apartment in Paris that has room for a library.

The narrator and his friend Dupin are smoking pipes and thinking. You know they’re good friends because they’ve been sitting together in silence for an hour.

Their frenemy Monsieur G—, the prefect (chief) of the Paris police, stops by.

G— wants Dupin’s help solving a little mystery that’s got him and his men stumped.

Before he even hears the puzzle, Dupin suggests that maybe they are missing the solution because it’s too obvious.

That’s funny, G— says. Actually, he says, “Ha! ha! ha!—ha! ha! ha!—ho! ho! ho! […] Oh, Dupin, you will be the death of me yet!” (15).

Since this is a Poe short story, we’re kind of wondering if we should take this seriously.

The narrator asks him to explain the situation.

G— sits back with his pipe to explain, but not before really piquing their interest by announcing that he could lose his job just for talking about the situation.

Shmoopers awake: this next bit (paragraphs 3-30) is kind of a brain-melt, because the players use a lot of double-speak and innuendo. Once you get through the vagueness, the situation is actually pretty straightforward: D— stole a letter and is blackmailing the royal lady.

So, here’s the case:

An important “document […] has been purloined [stolen] from the royal apartments ” (20).

G— knows who took the document, because the royal lady actually saw the theft take place.

G— also knows that the thief still has it, because if he’d sold it or given it away, there would have been obvious consequences. And, so far, there haven’t been.

Translation: the letter contains some kind of scandalous gossip that would have caused a sensation if D— had let it out of his hands.

Dupin asks G— to give further details.

G— says that whoever has the letter has lots of power.

Apparently, the document has information that would make its owner look bad in front of a certain other person whom Dupin doesn’t want to name.

So, the person who has the document has power over the person he stole it from.

(This is all a really roundabout way of saying that the royal lady is being blackmailed.)

The narrator says that the thief’s power over the person who got robbed depends on that person knowing the identity of the thief, and he can’t imagine that anyone would dare.

G— says that the thief is none other than the Minister D—, a man “who dares all things” (28).

Now he fills in the details:

The female royal person (let’s just cut to the chase and call her the queen) got a letter when she was alone in her private rooms.

So, she was reading it, when in walked “the other exalted person from whom it was her especial wish to conceal it” (28).

In other words, in walks the king. Oops.

She can’t shove it in the drawer without drawing attention to herself, so she ended up leaving the letter on the table in plain view. (Keep this in mind for later.)

The king didn’t notice it.

Don’t relax yet. In walked Minister D—, a man known for being sharp-eyed.

When he saw the address on the letter, and saw that the queen was a little flustered, he guessed what was going on.

(We aren’t told what that is—ever—but most people assume that the queen is cheating on the king and the letter is from her lover. Still, it could be something else.)

(Also, notice that letters during the 1840s, when Poe was writing, didn’t have separate envelopes, but were folded so the contents were on the inside and the address was on the outside.)

D— just happened to have a similar looking letter in his pocket.

He whipped it out and read it over. When he was done, he oh-so-casually put it on the table next to the queen’s.

Right before he left, he picked up the queen’s letter and left his behind. You know, accidentally-on-purpose, except really just on purpose.

The queen couldn’t do a thing about it, because the king was right next to her. If she’d stopped D—, he would have shown the letter to the king.

For months now, D— has been using the letter “for political purposes, to a dangerous extent” (30). Unclear, but basically he’s making the queen grant him political favors.

Obviously, the queen wants to put a stop to this. So, she called on G—.

But, so far, G— is stumped.

Dupin takes over. Yep, he says, it’s clear D— still has the letter, because having the letter gives D— power. If D— showed it to the king, he wouldn’t be able to control the queen anymore. (That’s the thing about blackmail.)

G— agrees and says that his first step was to search D—’s apartment.

Apparently, D— hardly ever sleeps at home. The few servants he has live far from his apartment and are always drunk, due to the fact (obviously) that they’re from Naples, Italy.

Yes, this is an ugly stereotype. Welcome to the nineteenth century.

G— has keys that, creepily and somewhat unbelievably, open any lock on any door in Paris, so getting in was no problem.

Every night for the past three months, G— and his men have searched D—’s apartment, thoroughly.

He’s really got his reputation staked on finding the letter.

Oh yeah, and there’s an “enormous” reward (36).

At this point, we have to ask: if the queen is so bent on keeping the letter a secret, why is she calling in the entire Paris police force?

Anyway, Dupin asks if D— could have hidden the letter somewhere else.

G— says that, considering the way things are going “at court” right now, including some “intrigues” that D— is involved in, he’d need to be able to access the letter “at a moment’s notice” so he could destroy it if necessary (38).

This is confusing and more than a little implausible, but we’ll let it slide for narrative effect.

Dupin asks if they’ve made sure that D— isn’t carrying the letter around with him.

G— replies that the police, with G— watching, have posed as muggers to rough D— up and search him. No letter.

That was a silly search, Dupin says. D— is no “fool” and would have anticipated being searched.

Not a fool? G— scoffs. D— is a known poet, which is basically the same thing as being a fool.

Dupin says he’s “guilty of certain doggerel” (44) as well.

(Doggerel is bad poetry.)

Now Dupin asks G— to describe the search of the apartments.

Apparently, he and his men searched every single place a letter could possibly be hidden. They investigated the legs of tables and chairs in the hotel. They looked through all the books in the apartment, scoured every cabinet, and peaked behind every mirror.

D— and his men even divided the place up, and literally searched “each individual square inch” (and the square inches of the two neighboring houses).

Dupin asks if they looked outside, in the basement, under the carpet, and behind the wallpaper.

Yep.

Ergo, the letter must be somewhere else.

G— agrees.

Dupin suggests he search again, but G— says he’s convinced the letter isn’t there.

Dupin says he’s stumped. He asks if they “have […] an accurate description of the letter” (72).

G— sure does. He gets out his notebook and reads a description of the inside and outside of the letter.

Not that we get to hear it, of course.

G— finally leaves, looking really bummed out.

A month passes.

One evening, the narrator and Dupin are doing pretty much the same thing they were last time (smoking silently in a dark room, presumably), when G— shows up again.

The narrator asks G— about the letter.

Still no luck.

Dupin asks him the amount of the reward.

G— beats around the bush, but doesn’t come out with the amount, other than to say it’s BIG. He declares that he would give “fifty thousand francs” (78) of his own money literally right now to whoever could give him the letter.

Dupin suggests that G— asks someone else’s “advice” (86).

G— says he’d be happy to take advice, but did he mention that he’d give fifty thousand to anybody who could help him?

Dupin whips out his checkbook and writes a check for the amount. He tells G— to sign the check and prepare to be amazed.

(In those days, checks weren’t personalized. G—’s signature makes the check personal to him.)

Shock! Surprise! Confusion!

G— is willing to try anything at this point, so he signs the check and gives it to Dupin.

Dupin stashes the check and oh-so-casually produces the letter.

G— examines it, looks extremely happy, and then takes off without even waiting to hear how Dupin found it.

Wait, but we want to know!

And Dupin is going to tell us via the narrator.

He says that if the letter had been in any of the places G— had looked, he would have found it.

G—’s problem is that he tries to make the same technique—exhaustive but not very inventive searching—fit every situation. It’s the old “Procrustean bed” trick (94).

He says that “a schoolboy is a better reasoner” (94) than G—.

Now we get a little anecdote:

Dupin used to know an eight-year-old schoolboy who beat everyone at “even and odd” (94), a game of marbles where one player holds a number of marbles in hand, and another player guesses whether the amount of marbles is odd or even. If you’re right, you get to keep the marbles.

This is what passed for a “game” in the early nineteenth century.

Dupin asked the boy the secret of his success.

We have a sneaking suspicion that maybe Dupin was the eight-year-old boy.

Simple, the boy said. All you had to do is make yourself think like the guy you were up against. Is he the type to switch it up on you, or to try to outsmart you by not switching it up?

In other words: say he went with “even” the first time. Is going to do “odd” the next time, or is he going to try to outsmart you by sticking with “even”? Or is he going to be really tricky and figure that you’re going to expect him to do that, and so go to the obvious “odd”?

What the boy does is mirror the other person’s facial expression and see what thoughts and feelings pop up when he does.

Apparently this technique worked, and he ended up owning the marbles of basically the entire school.

(In other words, you can guess how someone thinks just by performing the actions that he does.)

G— couldn’t find the letter, because he couldn’t get into D—’s head. Instead, he looked where he would have hidden it.

But D— is smarter than G— and therefore didn’t hide the letter in the same way that G— would have.

G— looked where most people would have hidden the letter, but failed to look where an unusually smart person would hide it.

Most people would try to hide something in some hidden place. So, by that line of reasoning, G— wouldn’t have to be smart to find the letter, only very thorough. If he were to look in all the places the letter could be hidden, he would surely find it eventually

Criminals get away with things when the police underestimate their intelligence, and fail to vary their techniques for individual criminals.

The root of G—’s miscalculation is his belief “that the Minister is a fool because he has acquired renown as a poet” (98).

He continues, “All fools are poets, this the Prefect feels, and he is merely guilty of a non distributio medii in thence inferring that all poets are fools.”

(“Non distributio medii” is a logical fallacy. It means “the undistributed middle.” Go here for some examples and discussion. Dupin is saying that even if all fools are poets, it doesn’t follow that all poets are fools. Get it? It’s like the square/rectangle thing: all squares are rectangles, but that doesn’t mean that all rectangles are squares. Because, you know, they aren’t.)

The narrator asks if D— is, in fact, a poet, because he’s pretty sure that D— is a mathematician, not a poet.

Dupin says that he knows D—, and D—is a “poet and a mathematician.”

According to Dupin, “as mere mathematician he could not have reasoned at all,” but because he is both, he reasons “well” (100).

The narrator can’t believe that Dupin is contradicting “the voice of the world” (101) by talking trash about mathematicians. He says mathematical reasoning is considered the best reasoning of all.

Dupin says something in French that basically means “Popular ideas are usually stupid” (377).

That may be true, but Hollywood would like to point out that they’re also extremely lucrative.

The problem is that math looks at “form and quantity” (shapes and amounts), but that’s not really applicable when it comes to people.

Like, in math, the total of all the parts of something is equal to the whole.

Not so much when it comes to motive.

See, mathematicians actually operate from faith, not reason. If a person doubts that a particular mathematic formula is true in every case, the mathematician gets angry instead of proving it.

(Translation: If D— had just used math to figure out the best place to hide the letter, G— would have found it, no problem. But D— is a poet, so he understands people.)

Since D— is a high-ranking politician, he’d definitely know all about G—’s usual methods of investigation.

Actually, he probably stayed away from home at night just to bait G— and convince him that the letter wasn’t in the apartment.

Knowing where most people hide things, and therefore where G— would be looking, D— would have to hide the letter somewhere that most people wouldn’t.

Hey, remember how G— laughed when Dupin suggested that he might be overlooking the obvious in his investigation?

That’s because he couldn’t imagine that D— had hidden the letter in plain sight of “the whole word” (110).

Dupin says he thought a lot about how smart D— is, and the fact that he needed to have the letter in an easily accessible place, and the fact that G— had searched all the hidden places.

The only logical conclusion is that D— had decided not to hide the letter at all.

So, “one fine morning,” (111) Dupin put on a pair of “green spectacles” and went to visit D— at his hotel. (His cover story for the weird glasses is that his eyes are injured.)

Here’s what happens:

D— and Dupin are hanging out and having a little chat, but Dupin is simultaneously checking the whole place out.

Suddenly, he notices a little rack hanging from the mantle of the fireplace.

In it, Dupin sees a few business cards and……

(Insert suspense)

…a letter!

Oh, but it’s crumbled, ripped, and addressed to D—, totally unlike the one that G— described.

Wait a minute. Wouldn’t that be the perfect disguise for a super important blackmail letter?

Why, yes it would.

Dupin memorizes the appearance of the letter. He figures out that it’s been turned inside out, and then resealed and readdressed.

Soon, Dupin says goodbye, and accidentally-on-purpose leaves his “gold snuff-box” behind (116). But really just on purpose.

Hm, are you seeing any parallels between Dupin and D— here?

Anyway, the next morning Dupin uses the box as his excuse to return. (Oldest trick in the book.)

While D— and Dupin are chatting, a man in the street shoots off a gun and causes a ruckus.

D— rushes to the window to check out the scene, allowing Dupin to snag the letter.

When D— comes back from the window, Dupin splits with the letter.

He tells the narrator that he paid the guy to make the ruckus.

The narrator asks why Dupin didn’t just take the letter when he first saw it.

Well, for one thing, D— might have murdered him if he’d done that.

For another thing, Dupin likes the queen, whom D— “had in his power” for the past year and a half.

Now, tables are turned. If he doesn’t know the letter is missing, he’ll continue to act as if he still has it, destroying himself politically in the process.

When he figures out that his blackmail isn’t working, D— will inevitably go for the letter.

Instead of the letter, he’ll find a fake, left for him by Dupin.

The narrator asks if Dupin wrote anything in the letter.

Why yes, yes he did.

Apparently, Dupin owes D— from some long-ago unspecific offense, so he wanted to leave D— a clue to let him know that Dupin is totally onto him.

And the clue is a quotation: “Un dessein si funeste/ S’il n’est digne d’Atrée, est digne de Thyeste.” They are to be found in Crébillon’s ‘Atrée’ (123).

Poe’s Short Stories Summary and Analysis of The Purloined Letter

Reprising their roles from “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” C. Auguste Dupin and his friend the unnamed narrator appear in a small library room in Paris, silently smoking and, in the case of the narrator, contemplating two of Dupin’s previous cases involving the Rue Morgue murders and the death of Marie Rôget. Monsieur G., the Prefect of the Parisian police, enters the apartment to ask Dupin’s opinion of a case, although he refuses to do so in the dark because the idea is “beyond his comprehension” and thus an “oddity.” He describes the case as simple but puzzling, but ignores Dupin’s suggestion that perhaps its simplicity and self-evidence is what confuses the police.

According to G., a letter has been stolen from the royal apartments that the police know the thief will use for blackmail. The letter belongs to a lady who was forced to hastily place it on a table when the person from whom she wished to conceal the secret entered the room. The Minister D., who also entered, saw and interpreted the contents of the letter correctly. He then placed a letter of similar appearance beside it before retrieving the incorrect paper prior to leaving. The lady saw the substitution but was unable to point it out because of the presence of the third person, who noticed nothing. Since then, D. has used his possession of the letter for political blackmail, and because the lady is unable to publicly reclaim the letter, she has asked the police to retrieve it for her.

The narrator notes that the minister must still have the letter, since to relinquish it would be to lose his power of blackmail, but the police have been unable to locate it, despite having thoroughly searched D.’s apartment. D. cannot be keeping the letter on his person, since the police have already searched him twice. Dupin remarks that the minister cannot be much of a fool, although the Prefect disparages the man for being a poet and therefore, in the Prefect’s view, unintelligent. The narrator asks the Prefect about the police’s method of search, and the Prefect explains how thoroughly they have searched the apartment, particularly since the reward for the retrieval of the letter is so great. The narrator agrees with the Prefect that the letter must not be in the apartment, but Dupin asks G. to search it again before asking for a complete description of the letter.

A month later the Prefect returns, having found nothing on a second search, and mentions that he will offer a reward of fifty thousand francs, since the retrieval of the letter has become increasingly important. Dupin tells the Prefect to write the check; the astonished Prefect does so, takes the letter from Dupin, and rushes away from the apartment. Dupin explains to the narrator that the police were very skilled but that the case was not suited to the unimaginative. He provides the example of a schoolboy who was particularly skilled at a guessing game in which he was to guess whether his opponent had an odd or even number of marbles and in which he bet one marble per game. The schoolboy won because he was able to emulate his opponent’s logic by imitating the other boy’s face in order to see how the expression made him think. The police only think about what they believe to be the best course and fail to consider the thoughts of the Minister.

Dupin notes that the Prefect believes that D. is a fool. However, D. is also a mathematician and can thus combine creativity and logic. According to Dupin, while normal mathematicians lack imagination and would have hidden the letter away in exactly the type of place where a policeman would search, the Minister foresaw the probable avenue of investigation and chose an alternate route. Dupin offers the example of a game in which one attempts to guess the point on a globe of which the other is thinking. A novice will choose an obscure name, but a skilled player will choose a very prominent name, knowing that the other person will discard such names as possibilities because they are too obvious. The Prefect does not understand this reasoning, but Dupin places himself into the mind of the Minister and realizes that the Minister would have decided to hide the letter in the most obvious place possible.

After coming to this conclusion about the letter, Dupin visits D.’s apartment while wearing green glasses that conceal the fact that he is looking around the apartment. At length, he discovers several visiting cards and a letter that has been torn and altered in appearance hanging carelessly from a rack on the mantelpiece. D., it appears, placed the letter in full view after turning it inside out, readdressing it, and making it appear useless. Dupin memorizes the appearance of the letter while talking with the Minister and leaves a gold snuff box at the apartment. The next morning, he comes back on the pretense of having forgotten his snuff box, and when D. rushes to his window to observe a disturbance involving gunshots that Dupin previously orchestrated, Dupin substitutes the letter with a fake that he created the night before and soon returns home.

The narrator asks why Dupin did not simply steal the letter. Dupin answers that D. might have been desperate enough to have his attendants kill Dupin. In addition, he notes that after a year and a half of being subjected to the Minister’s blackmail, the lady will now have the upper hand. He predicts that D. will soon embarrass himself and cause his political downfall, but he has no pity for the man because D. is “an unprincipled man of genius” who once did Dupin a wrong, which Dupin good-naturedly promised to return. Dupin admits that he would like to know the man’s thoughts when he opens the letter to read a quote from Crebillon’s Atrée et Thyeste which translates to “If such a grievous plan is not worthy of Atreus, then it is worthy of Thyestes.” Dupin knows that D. will recognize Dupin as having gotten his revenge.

Analysis

Whereas Dupin’s investigation in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” established the basic form for a classic whodunit mystery, “The Purloined Letter” takes an entirely different route to highlight Dupin’s methods of ratiocination and use of creativity to place himself in the mind of the criminal. The case is clear in that the thief and the details of the crime are perfectly obvious, but what is not clear is how to outwit the thief and return the letter to its rightful owner. The story shows much more of the character of the Prefect, who merely appeared in order to act disgruntled and embarrassed at the end of the first Dupin story. As a result, the narrative includes two characters, the narrator and the Prefect, who serve as obvious foils to Dupin, while the Minister’s similarities to Dupin advance the concept of double selves that is prevalent in so many of Poe’s stories.

With his energy, obvious emotions, and lack of insight, the Prefect stands in direct opposition to Dupin’s calmer, more analytical approach to solving cases. His major fault is that he does not understand that the key to solving a case is to think in a way that successfully approximates the mindset of the criminal; instead, he resorts to trying to find more and more clever ways that he would personally have chosen to hide the letter while chasing answers that are increasingly further away from the correct solution. Whether the case is grisly and bizarre as in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” or simple and clever as in this instance, Monsieur G. requires the assistance of Dupin because of his consistent inability to imagine the psyches of others. The narrator is less removed from Dupin’s point of view and is more inclined to think as Dupin would, but he lacks the perception that allows him to reason out the case himself and becomes a surrogate for the reader. Because the narrator writes in the first person, he takes on the role of conveying and interpreting Dupin’s brilliance for the average individual.

The clash between the Prefect and Dupin is revealing of their opposing temperaments, but it is also a source of humor, as Dupin constantly but subtly takes ironic verbal jabs at the oblivious Prefect, whom the story constantly shows at a relative mental disadvantage. When the Prefect explains that the owner of the letter contacted the Parisian police to help her retrieve the letter, for example, Dupin sarcastically remarks that it must be a reflection of the Prefect’s intelligence, a prod which the latter fails to notice, therefore highlighting his inability to understand anyone’s thoughts but his own. Later, the Prefect dismisses the Minister because he is a poet and thus a fool, but Dupin notes drolly that he too is something of a poet. The exchange is entertaining because the Prefect is totally unaware of the fact that a poet’s creativity is the trait that allows one to think like a Dupin or a Minister D. instead of like the Prefect.

On the other side of the divide between the unimaginative and the analytical lies Minister D., who might be Dupin’s equal in understanding the human mind. The concept of alter egos often appears in Poe’s short stories, and Minister D. functions as the criminal version of Dupin, a man who generally acts on the side of the law. Dupin evidently recognizes the similarity, for he tells the narrator that the Minister “is that monstrum horrendum, an unprincipled man of genius,” and he takes pleasure in trumping the Minister in a battle of wits. In the fake letter that Dupin leaves for the Minister, he provides a quote about two Greek brothers from mythology, Atreus and Thyestes. Thyestes commits adultery with Atreus’s wife, and in revenge, Atreus kills and cooks Thyestes’s sons before feeding them to his brother. The quote implies that although Atreus committed a great wrong, Thyestes was as much or more at fault because he started the feud. The example is extreme, but Dupin nonetheless sends the quote to explain that although Dupin may have stolen the letter, the Minister was at fault because he committed the first crime.

Despite all the discussion concerning the whereabouts of the letter in “The Purloined Letter,” the letter itself is merely a literary device around which Poe constructs a game of wits. The contents of the letter and its implications in the political sphere are not included because the plot does not need them, and any other object would have served just as well. Significantly, when Dupin finally finds the letter, the Minister has placed it carelessly into a rack hanging from the fireplace after folding it inside-out and making it appear insignificant. The manner of his hiding the letter is extremely relevant for the purposes of the story, but its inconsequential appearance reflects its relative importance in the novel. We might also consider it ironic that after all the fuss over the letter, its contents will never become any more public to the fictional world of Dupin than it will to the reader.

Summary and Analysis “The Purloined Letter”

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Summary

Of all of Poe’s stories of ratiocination (or detective stories), “The Purloined Letter” is considered his finest. This is partially due to the fact that there are no gothic elements, such as the gruesome descriptions of dead bodies, as there was in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” But more important, this is the story that employs most effectively the principle of ratiocination; this story brilliantly illustrates the concept of the intuitive intellect at work as it solves a problem logically. Finally, more than with most of his stories, this one is told with utmost economy.

“The Purloined Letter” emphasizes several devices from “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and adds several others. The story is divided into two parts. In the first part, Monsieur G —— , Prefect of Police in Paris, visits Dupin with a problem: A letter has been stolen and is being used to blackmail the person from whom it was stolen. The thief is known (Minister D —— ) and the method is known (substitution viewed by the victim, who dared not protest). The problem is to retrieve the letter, since the writer and the victim, as well as Minister D —— , have important posts in the government; the demands he is making are becoming dangerous politically. The Prefect has searched Minister D —— ‘s home thoroughly, even taking the furniture apart; he and his men have found nothing. Dupin’s advice is that they thoroughly re-search the house. A month later, Monsieur G —— returns, having found nothing. This time, he says that he will pay fifty thousand francs to anyone who can obtain the letter for him. Dupin invites him to write the check; when this is done, Dupin hands the Prefect the letter without any further comment.

The second half of “The Purloined Letter” consists of Dupin’s explanation, to his chronicler, of how he obtained the letter. One of his basic assumptions is an inversion of one of the aphorisms that was introduced in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”; the case is so difficult to solve because it appears to be so simple. Beyond that, Dupin introduces the method of psychological deduction. Before he did anything else, he reviewed everything he knew about Minister D —— . Then, he reviewed what he knew about the case. With this in mind, Dupin tried to reconstruct the Minister’s thinking, deciding that he would very likely have hidden the letter in plain sight. Using this theory, Dupin visited Minister D —— and found the letter in plain sight but boldly disguised. He memorized the appearance of the letter, and he left a snuffbox as an excuse to return. Having duplicated the letter, he exchanged his facsimile for the original during a prearranged diversion. Retrieving his snuff-box, he departed. His solution introduces into detective fiction the formula of “the most obvious place.”

Dupin is, of course, the original eccentric but brilliant detective. He seems to be a very private person, though one with connections and acquaintances in many places. He prefers the darkness and the evening; darkness, he feels, is particularly conducive to reflection. He prefers to gather his information and to ponder thoroughly before any action is taken. He talks little; an hour or more of contemplative silence seems common. And, of course, he is an expert in the psychology of people of various types; indeed, he seems to be learned in a number of areas — mathematics and poetry, for example.

The Prefect, Monsieur G —— , is a contrast to Dupin. Whereas Dupin is primarily concerned with the psychological elements of the case, G —— is almost wholly concerned with physical details and evidence. G —— talks much and says little. Dupin considers things broadly, while G —— ‘s point of view is extremely narrow. Anything G —— does not understand is “odd” and not worth considering; for Dupin, that is a matter for investigation. G —— believes in a great deal of physical activity during an investigation, while Dupin believes in a maximum of thought and a minimum of physical exertion. Though Dupin says that the Paris police are excellent within their limitations, it is clear that G —— ‘s limitations are quite severe.

The personality of the unnamed narrator, the Dupin-chronicler, lies between these two extremes. Though he shares some of Dupin’s tastes — silent contemplation in darkness, for example — and has some understanding of Dupin’s methods, he seems psychologically closer to G —— than to Dupin. He seems to be a rather ordinary person with rather ordinary views and ideas. Thus, his assumptions and his interjections are often erroneous; he assumes, for example, that if the police have not been able to find the letter after their search, then it must be elsewhere. In his argument with Dupin about mathematicians, the narrator takes the common view and attitude toward mathematicians, a position that Dupin explicitly suggests is idiocy. In other words, the narrator is a mediator between Dupin and the reader. His reactions are similar to those of the reader, though he is somewhat less astute than the reader, so that the reader can feel superior to him. Naturally, such a narrator guides our attitudes toward Dupin, G —— , and the case. He is, for example, in awe of Dupin’s abilities and methods; while the reader may maintain a more critical distance, he is guided in that direction to some degree. Finally, such a narrator determines the amount of information which a reader receives and guides the attention of the reader to the information received. In this case, the narrator tells us everything, but only as he receives it; because he did not witness the case being solved, the reader doesn’t either.

The idea that the reader is a participant in the investigation of a crime and thus should be given all the information on which the detective bases his conclusions is quite modern. In “The Purloined Letter,” the reader has little chance to participate, first because little information about Minister D —— ‘s character is given in the first half of the story, and, second, because there is no indication of any activity by Dupin until the second half. Poe’s purpose was not to invite reader participation, but rather to emphasize rationality, stressing logical thinking as the means of solving problems. Consequently, Dupin’s exposition of his thought processes are the most important part of the story. Without this highlighting of the logical investigation and solution of a problem, the detective story may never have developed; it would certainly be very different if it had. However, with this method and approach established, it became logical, and rather easy, to evolve the idea of the reader as a participant.

Attempting to determine the psychology of the criminal is an honorable tradition in detective fiction. The particular methods that are used change as more is learned about human beings, their behaviors, and their motivations; they also change, perhaps even more, as psychological theories change. Thus, much of Poe’s — or Dupin’s — psychology, especially the explanations, seems dated. For instance, the boy whom Dupin uses as an example arranges his face so it is as similar to the other person’s expression as possible; this is supposed to give rise to thoughts and feelings that are similar to those of the other person. In the sense that outward expressions — facial expressions, clothes, and so on — are thought to influence the way a person feels, this idea is somewhat still current; however, that effect is thought to be general rather than specific, and we no longer believe that we can gain much knowledge of another person in this way. In addition, it is probably true that certain habits of thinking are likely to contribute to a person’s success in a field; however, the distinctions are by no means as rigid as Poe made them seem, nor are the qualities so narrow. Although the principles that Dupin works from are rather outdated, his method is direct. This method is, of course, applicable to other kinds of problems posed in detective fiction; whenever the detective can learn and apply some knowledge of the criminal’s psychology, he is closer to the solution of the crime.

Other details in “The Purloined Letter” reveal the story’s era — the political system in France, Dupin’s comments about poetry, mathematics, and the sciences in particular. Nevertheless, the story still reads well, and the details are overshadowed by the sweep of the puzzle and the story. Even if the story were not still interesting reading, “The Purloined Letter” would be of prime historical importance for it establishes the method of psychological deduction, the solution of the most obvious place, and the assumption that the case that seems simplest may be the most difficult to solve. Whether one is interested in good reading or has a historical interest in detective fiction, “The Purloined Letter” provides both.

The Purloined Letter” (1844)

 

Summary

In a small room in Paris, an unnamed narrator, who also narrates “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” sits quietly with his friend, C. Auguste Dupin. He ponders the murders in the Rue Morgue, which Dupin solved in that story. Monsieur G——, the prefect of the Paris police, arrives, having decided to consult Dupin again. The prefect presents a case that is almost too simple: a letter has been taken from the royal apartments. The police know who has taken it: the Minister D——, an important government official. According to the prefect, a young lady possessed the letter, which contains information that could harm a powerful individual. When the young lady was first reading the letter, 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. The sinister Minister D—— then walked in and noted the letter’s contents. Quickly grasping the seriousness of the situation, he produced a letter of his own that resembled the important letter. He left his own letter next to the original one as he began to talk of Parisian affairs. Finally, as he prepared to leave the apartment, he purposely retrieved the lady’s letter in place of his own. Now, the prefect explains, the Minister D—— possesses a great deal of power over the lady.

Dupin asks whether the police have searched the Minister’s residence, arguing that since the power of the letter derives from its being readily available, it must be in his apartment. The prefect responds that they have searched the Minister’s residence but have not located the letter. 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 prefect mentions that he is willing to search long and hard because the reward offered in the case is so generous. Upon Dupin’s request, the prefect reads him a physical description of the letter. Dupin suggests that the police search again.

One month later, Dupin and the narrator are again sitting together when the prefect visits. The prefect admits that he cannot find the letter, even though the reward has increased. The prefect says that he will pay 50,000 francs to anyone who obtains the letter for him. Dupin tells him to write a check for that amount on the spot. Upon receipt of the check, Dupin hands over the letter. The prefect rushes off to return it to its rightful owner, and Dupin explains how he obtained the letter.

Dupin admits that the police are skilled investigators according to their own principles. He explains this remark by describing a young boy playing “even and odd.” In this game, each player must guess whether the number of things (usually toys) held by another player is even or odd. If the guesser is right, he gets one of the toys. If he is wrong, he loses a toy of his own. The boy whom Dupin describes plays the game well because he bases his guesses on the knowledge of his opponent. When he faces difficulty, he imitates the facial expression of his opponent, as though to understand what he thinks and feels. With this knowledge, he often guesses correctly. Dupin argues that the Paris police do not use this strategy and therefore could not find the letter: the police think only to look for a letter in places where they themselves might hide it.

Dupin argues that the Minister D—— is intelligent enough not to hide the letter in the nooks and crannies of his apartment—exactly where the police first investigate. He describes to the narrator a game of puzzles in which one player finds a name on a map and tells the other player to find it as well. Amateurs, says Dupin, pick the names with the smallest letters. According to Dupin’s logic, the hardest names to find are actually those that stretch broadly across the map because they are so obvious.

With this game in mind, Dupin recounts the visit he made to the Minister’s apartment. After surveying the Minister’s residence, Dupin notices a group of visiting cards hanging from the mantelpiece. A letter accompanies them. It has a different exterior than that previously described by the prefect, but Dupin also observes that the letter appears to have been folded back on itself. He becomes sure that it is the stolen document. In order to create a reason for returning to the apartment, he purposely leaves behind his snuffbox. When he goes back the next morning to retrieve it, he also arranges for someone to make a commotion outside the window while he is in the apartment. When the Minister rushes to the window to investigate the noise, Dupin replaces the stolen letter with a fake. He justifies his decision to leave behind another letter by predicting that the Minister will embarrass himself when he acts in reliance upon the letter he falsely believes he still possesses. Dupin remarks that the Minister once wronged him in Vienna and that he has pledged not to forget the insult. Inside the fake letter, then, Dupin inscribes, a French poem that translates into English, “So baneful a scheme, if not worthy of Atreus, is worthy of Thyestes.”

Analysis

Along with “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” “The Purloined Letter” establishes a new genre of short fiction in American literature: the detective story. Poe considered “The Purloined Letter” his best detective story, and critics have long identified the ways in which it redefines the mystery genre—it turns away from action toward intellectual analysis, for example. As opposed to the graphic violence of “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” which features bodily mutilation and near decapitation by a wild animal, “The Purloined Letter” focuses more dryly on the relationship between the Paris police and Dupin, between the ineffectual established order and the savvy private eye. When the narrator opens the story by reflecting upon the gruesome murders in the Rue Morgue that Dupin has helped to solve, Poe makes it clear that the prior story is on his mind. Poe sets up the cool reason of “The Purloined Letter” in opposition to the violence of “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” The battered and lacerated bodies of “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” are replaced by the bloodless, inanimate stolen letter. However, just as the Paris police are unable to solve the gory crime of passion in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” they are similarly unable to solve this apparently simple mystery, in which the solution is hidden in plain sight.

Poe moves away from violence and action by associating Dupin’s intelligence with his reflectiveness and his radical theories about the mind. This tale does not have the constant action of stories like “The Cask of Amontillado” or “The Black Cat.” Instead, this tale features the narrator and Dupin sitting in Dupin’s library and discussing ideas. The tale’s action, relayed by flashbacks, takes place outside the narrative frame. The narrative itself is told through dispassionate analysis. The intrusions of the prefect and his investigations of the Minister’s apartment come off as unrefined and unintellectual. Poe portrays the prefect as simultaneously the most active and the most unreflective character in the story. Dupin’s most pointed criticisms of the prefect have less to do with a personal attack than with a critique of the mode of investigation employed by the police as a whole. Dupin suggests that the police cannot think outside their own standard procedures. They are unable to place themselves in the minds of those who actually commit crimes. Dupin’s strategy of solving crimes, on the other hand, involves a process of thinking like someone else. Just as the boy playing “even and odd” enters his opponent’s mind, Dupin inhabits the consciousness of the criminal. He does not employ fancy psychological theories, but rather imitates the train of thought of his opponent. He succeeds in operating one step ahead of the police because he thinks as the Minister does.

This crime-solving technique of thinking like the criminal suggests that Dupin and the Minister are more doubles than opposites. The revenge aspect of the story, which Dupin promises after the Minister offends him in Vienna, arguably derives from their threatening similarity. Dupin’s note inside the phony letter, translated “So baneful a scheme, if not worthy of Atreus, is worthy of Thyestes,” suggests the rivalry that accompanies brotherly minds. In the French dramatist Crébillon’s early-eighteenth-century tragedy Atrée et Thyeste (or Atreus and Thyestes), Thyestes seduces the wife of his brother, Atreus. In retaliation, Atreus murders the sons of Thyestes and serves them to their father at a feast. Dupin implies here that Thyestes deserves more punishment than Atreus because he commits the original wrong. In contrast, Atreus’s revenge is legitimate because it repays the original offense. Dupin considers his own deed to be revenge and thereby morally justified.

C. Auguste Dupin

In the stories “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and “The Purloined Letter,” Poe creates the genre of detective fiction and the original expert sleuth, C. Auguste Dupin. In both “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and “The Purloined Letter,” Dupin works outside conventional police methods, and he uses his distance from traditional law enforcement to explore new ways of solving crimes. He continually argues that the Paris police exhibit stale and unoriginal methods of analysis. He says that the police are easily distracted by the specific facts of the crime and are unable to provide an objective standpoint from which to investigate. In “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” the police cannot move beyond the gruesome nature of the double homicide. Because they are so distracted by the mutilated and choked victims, they do not closely inspect the windows of the apartment, which reveal a point of entry and escape. Dupin distances himself from the emotional aspect of the scene’s violence. Like a mathematician, he views the crime scene as a site of calculation, and he considers the moves of the murderer as though pitted against him in a chess game.

In “The Purloined Letter,” Dupin solves the theft of the letter by putting himself at risk politically. Whereas the Paris police tread lightly around the actions of Minister D——, an important government official, Dupin ignores politics just as he ignores emotion in the gruesome murders of the Rue Morgue. In this story, Dupin reveals his capacity for revenge. When the Minister insulted him in Vienna years before the crime presently in question, Dupin promised to repay the slight. This story demonstrates that Dupin’s brilliance is not always dispassionately mathematical. He cunningly analyzes the external facts of the crime, but he is also motivated by his hunger for revenge. Dupin must function as an independent detective because his mode of investigation thrives on intuition and personal cunning, which cannot be institutionalized in a traditional police force.

The Purloined Letter”

C. Auguste Dupin –  Asavvy and learned Parisian who helps the city’s police solve crimes. Dupin uses psychology to foil the plans of a thief and uncover a stolen letter that the police of Paris could not uncover by conventional investigations.

Read an in-depth analysis of C. Auguste Dupin. 

Unnamed narrator –  A friend of Dupin. In awe of Dupin’s brilliance, the narrator faithfully recounts Dupin’s explanations without doubting or challenging him.

Monsieur G——  –  The Prefect of the Paris police. Limited by his conventional police training, Monsieur G—— depends on Dupin’s assistance in peculiarly difficult crimes, and his own general competence highlights Dupin’s superior abilities.

Minister D——  –  A government official and the thief of the letter. Minister D—— ‘s ability to outwit the police in his crime proves he is a worthy adversary for Dupin.

Poe and ‘The Purloined Letter’

While American author Edgar Allan Poe is most famous for his Gothic and American Romantic poems and short stories, such as ‘The Raven,’ he also helped invent the modern detective story. His three detective stories, the third of which is ‘The Purloined Letter,’ feature C. Auguste Dupin. Although his detective stories are not as widely discussed as his Gothic stories and poems, they remain a formative example of detective stories to this day. It was first published in 1845 and made Poe twelve dollars.

Story Summary

Since ‘The Purloined Letter’ is the third story in which detective C. Auguste Dupin stars, his character has already been introduced, and Edgar Allan Poe leaps right into the action. C. Auguste Dupin is discussing his closed cases with the narrator when they are interrupted by the arrival of the Paris Prefect of the Police, G. Unsurprisingly, the Prefect has a case for Dupin.

As the title of the story suggests, a letter has been stolen. The letter belongs to an unnamed female. The letter’s contents are being used by Minister D to blackmail the woman.

The Prefect tells Dupin that he believes that the letter’s contents are still a secret because it is being used to exploit the woman and not destroy the woman’s reputation. He also believes that Minister D has the letter on his person because it is the only way to protect the letter and utilize it as blackmail.

Unfortunately, a thorough search of Minister D’s hotel has turned up nothing. Prefect describes the letter, and Dupin commits both the letter’s description and all the other pertinent information to memory.

The story skips ahead a month. The Prefect is still searching for the letter. He offers Dupin 50,000 francs (part of the reward money for the letter’s return) if he can assist him. Dupin accepts the award money, then produces the letter, which he has already found.

Dupin explains to the narrator how he tracked down the letter. He says that the police underestimated Minister D because he writes poetry. Dupin visited Minister D in his hotel room. Instead of having hid the letter, Minister D left it out in the open. He did take some pains to disguise it, though. He wrote a different address on the opposite side of the letter. Dupin stole the letter, after swapping it out with a fake that included the following note: ‘If such a sinister design isn’t worthy of Atreus, it is worthy of Thyestes.’