The Purloined Letter by Edgar Allan Poe

 

The Purloined Letter by Edgar Allan Poe
source: Wikipedia

 Published in 1845, ‘The Purloined Letter’ is a detective short story written by the famous American poet, writer and literary critic, Edgar Allan Poe. Predominantly, throughout his career he wrote gothic and sensational literature. Edgar Allen Poe is popularly known as the “father of detective fiction”.

During his lifetime, Poe wrote three detective stories which were the ‘murders in the Rue Morgue’, ‘Mystery of Marie Roget’ and ‘the Purloined Letter’. Unlike his other stories, these were not sensational crime stories.

‘The Purloined Letter’ is often cited as a “tale of ratiocination” where rational thinking and logical deduction resonates throughout the story. The central mystery surrounds a letter that has been stolen from “an exalted personage” and needs to be recovered from the perpetrator. Poe’s protagonist is a private detective, C. Auguste Dupin solves the mystery with his astute use of rational thinking and observation skills.

The epigraph of the story gives clues about the theme of the story, guiding the reader through its main motive.

Nil sapientiae odiosius acumine nimio

The epigraph of ‘The Purloined Letter’ is a Latin phrase by Roman philosopher, Seneca which literally translates into-

“Nothing is so hateful to wisdom as an excess of cleverness.” The line of the epilogue creates a contrast between wisdom and excessive cleverness. The above line hints to the main characters of the story, that is, Dupin and the Minister. As Peter Swirski in his essay The case of Purloined letter says that 

"... the story can be seen as a conflict between a brilliant mind and a brilliant criminal."

 Poe through this story tries to convey his sentiment that excessive cleverness can lead to unfortunate circumstances, therefore wisdom is always more stable than excessive cleverness.

Poe tries to show the consequences of excessive cleverness when motivated by the desire to deceive or manipulate others (i.e. Queen and the police). Wisdom is more balanced, and always accounts for the consequences that can unfold due to the actions committed.

“Wisdom” may refer to the detective, Auguste Dupin who with the help of his knowledge, proper planning deals with the deceptive cunning of the Minister.

The Minister who is also referred to as “monstrum horrendum” is an intelligent yet unprincipled man, who managed to fool the whole Parisian police through his cleverness but couldn’t fool Dupin.

Knowing the police’s instincts to search the letter in complicated places, the minister had tried to conceal the letter within the range of their vision. The Minister with the help of his poetic cleverness, had set a visual trap for the police forces. But Dupin’s analytical approach, imagination and good sense made him outwit the minister. The letter, which had escaped the probing of the police, was found to be at a regular place by Dupin. The place of concealment was an ordinary shelf at the nook of the house.

Dupin, who is a genius in solving mysterious cases, shows that sometimes things appear to be obscure and mysterious, when actually they are simple and evident. The Parisian police and the Prefect had underestimated the intelligence of the Minister, that’s why the prefect was declared as an imbecile by Dupin.   

Poe shows that Dupin had the ability to put himself into the opponent’s shoes and imaginatively identify with their thinking, which shows us a deep understanding of human mind and psychology with which the detective is able to solve the crime. The place of concealment was an ordinary nook of the house.

Dupin gives us an analogy of eight-year old school boy, who had mastered the game of marble puzzles.

The boy was able to identify the marbles by “mere observation and admeasurement of the astuteness oh his opponents” and “identification of the reason’s intellect with that of his opponent.”

According to Dupin, Minister D was a poet also as he mentions that “as poet and mathematician, he would have reasoned well; as mere mathematician, he could not have reasoned at all”

Mathematicians often limit themselves to logic and aren’t creative. Creativity and imagination doesn’t come from logic or analytical thinking. Convergent thinking seeks only one plausible solution to the problem with the help of logical and analytical skills. However, divergent thinking is making arguments out of the box. Such thinking involves in coming up with multiple and creative answers to a given problem. Daniel pink argues, that people need to develop on divergent skills over analytical thinking. This makes a person unique in its own way. Twisted answers are often thought to be witty and more enjoyable to read or learn. This way we can touch up on different variety of thinking and also go beyond the conventional boundaries of contemplating things.