The purloined letter by Edgar Allan Poe - Essay Example

In this way, the Minister is a match to Dupin’s own high intelligence, allowing the latter to mirror and predict the former’s thought and behaviour. An illustration of the Minister’s intelligence is his first accidental encounter with the royal lady’s letter, where, “after discerning the hidden story through a brilliant act of reading in which his lynx eye immediately perceives the paper, recognises the handwriting of the address, observes the confusion of the personage addressed, and fathoms her secret, the Minister conceives the plan of pocketing the letter and then blackmailing the lady.

” (Thoms 141) Another merit of the story is the remarkable symmetry in the plot. The Minister, being a cunning and clever man, scripts the scenario in which he gains possession of the scandalous letter. For example, he manufactures a letter that looks similar to the lady’s secret possession and opens it and pretends to read it. Without raising any suspicion, he places casually places it next to the lady’s letter. After finishing his conversation, as he gestures to part, he nonchalantly picks up the lady’s letter.

Even if the lady notices that it is her letter which is being taken, she cannot object to it, for it would give away her secret. Dupin’s masterful counterplot to steal back the letter from the Minister is conceived on similar lines, lending symmetry to the plot. (Thoms 141) The symmetry extends further, for both Dupin and the Minister are poets and authorial figures, who “can read circumstances and script the action; they share the initial D; and they both purloin the letter, an action which promises profit and allows us to see more clearly how detection becomes a kind of thievery as the investigator assumes.

Another merit of the story is the remarkable symmetry in the plot. The Minister, being a cunning and clever man, scripts the scenario in which he gains possession of the scandalous letter. For example, he manufactures a letter that looks similar to the lady’s secret possession and opens it and pretends to read it. Without raising any suspicion, he places casually places it next to the lady’s letter. After finishing his conversation, as he gestures to part, he nonchalantly picks up the lady’s letter.

Even if the lady notices that it is her letter which is being taken, she cannot object to it, for it would give away her secret. Dupin’s masterful counterplot to steal back the letter from the Minister is conceived on similar lines, lending symmetry to the plot. (Thoms 141) The symmetry extends further, for both Dupin and the Minister are poets and authorial figures, who “can read circumstances and script the action; they share the initial D; and they both purloin the letter, an action which promises profit and allows us to see more clearly how detection becomes a kind of thievery as the investigator assumes possession of the hidden story and of the characters contained within it.

” (Thoms 141) Poe’s genius is also evident in how he criminalizes the solving of crime itself, thereby raising questions of morality. In other words, far from acting on noble intentions, Dupin undertakes to solve the crime only for personal benefit, namely a check for 50,000 francs.