Poe's Stories brief biography of edgar allan poe
part of Dupin’s character. His identification as
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Short Story By Flannery OConnor
| This is an interesting part of Dupin’s character. His identification as a poet and a mathematician as well as his obvious ability to tell a good story and create suspense likens him convincingly to Poe himself. The concept of poetry and methodology is what makes up a successful horror story, whose plot must be flawless but creative enough to deceive. Dupin explains that he finds fault with forms of thinking that are not abstractly logical. He thinks math is only concerned with shapes and quantities, which are truths of the relation of one thing to another, rather than the true quality of things. Ina book called Mythology, the author discusses the phenomenon where myths are remembered and referred to as if they are real. And the mathematician does this with the theories and equations he holds true, and will listen to no other mode of thought. Dupin summons the arenas of poetry and mathematics, the scope of mythology and the detail of geometry, so that the range of his knowledge seems limitless. And unlike many other figures of influence in Poe’s Gothic stories, Dupin’s knowledge has been gained by worldly means, reading widely and learning, which makes an interesting contrast to the paranormal side of traditional Gothic literature. Get hundreds more LitCharts at www.litcharts.com ©2017 LitCharts LLC www.LitCharts.com Page 52 Dupin returns to the Minister. He knows that, because the minister has fooled the Prefect, he has the abilities of a poet as well as a mathematician, and understood everything that the police were likely to do in response to his crime. Dupin believes that his absences from the apartment were deliberate, and that he knew the prefect’s train of thought and knew to avoid any kind of concealment of the letter. Dupin’s understanding of the Minister’s techniques shows that he understands the mind of a criminal, which gives him a certain threatening power which he wields throughout the story, just like in Murders in the Rue Morgue. We are made aware that Dupin could probably quite easily commit some crimes himself. Dupin reminds the narrator of "The Purloined Letter" what he said to the prefect when he visited, about the riddle being too self-evident. He believes that the material world and the metaphorical world are strongly connected. He uses two examples. The first is the principle of inertia being the equal in physics and metaphysics. The second is a game where one player asks another player to find a name on a map, and the clever player will choose an overarching county name or some other broad term that is stretched across the map or placed high upon a sign. Most people expect that the many-lettered, or obscure names will be most difficult to find, but it is often the simplest answer that can be overlooked, just like the case of the purloined letter. Dupin displays his skill in this speech. He shows us how he is able to consider deep concepts and human observations at the same time, and consider many dimensions and levels of meaning at once. While thinking of the academic realm of metaphysics, he also conjures a simple image of a map and the visual effect of the important names of counties and soon being spread across the terrain. The more Dupin considered the intelligence of the Minister, the more he believed that the best way he could invent of concealing the object beyond the scope of the prefect’s usual search, but also to keep it handy so he could destroy it at a moment’s notice, was to not conceal it at all. With this idea, Dupin says that he went to the Minister’s apartment himself, and performed his own search. Even the most obvious deception fools the police. In fact, the best Download 0.58 Mb. Share with your friends:
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