Poe's Stories brief biography of edgar allan poe
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Short Story By Flannery OConnor
| way to fool them is not to hide anything, to expose the crime completely. This makes the police force seem laughable and Dupin, with his own agenda, takes the lead by himself. Dupin mentions that if you saw the Minister at home, you’d think him one of the laziest men in the world, despite his reputation for being energetic. Dupin, wearing dark glasses so that he could look freely about the apartment, searched the documents lying about, and then noticed a card rack, with several letters in, one of which was very crumpled and used, with the Minister’s seal on it. Dupin knew this was the famous letter, even though it differed so radically from the one the Prefect described. In fact, it looked so much like a deliberate ploy to mislead, that Dupin was sure that the Minister had fashioned it to dupe the police, whose methods he knew to be both shallow and thorough enough to overlook such a clue. Dupin stayed fora longtime, pretending to be engrossed in conversation, and saw that the letter’s edges were chafed – he could tell that the letter had been turned inside out, and resealed. It is humorous how opposite Poe has made the two searches, the police search and Dupin’s, of this apartment. The police searched for months on end, every chair rung and bed sheet, while Dupin enters the room and within an hour or so spots the letter. This shows how inline Dupin’s mind and the Minister D___’s mind are. It furthers the notion that they are rivals or in fact doubles. But though they share the same kind of intelligence, Dupin is coming out on top – he is able to seethe Minister’s tricks before the Minister realizes that Dupin is investigating. Get hundreds more LitCharts at www.litcharts.com ©2017 LitCharts LLC www.LitCharts.com Page 53 Dupin purposely left a gold snuffbox on the Minister’s table so that he could return to retrieve it the next day. During this second visit, their conversation is interrupted by the sound of a pistol shot and frightened voices, which of course draws the Minister to the window. Dupin takes his opportunity to take the letter and replace it with a replica he had prepared. He explains that he had planted the gunman outside to create a distraction for just this purpose. Dupin uses indirection to trick the Minister, who was himself a master of indirection. Dupin bests his rival. The narrator of "The Purloined Letter" is unclear why Dupin replaced the letter, rather than just stealing it. Dupin explains that the Minister is a bold man with a lot of support around him, so he may have killed him if he learned the truth. Also, Dupin is eager to get revenge for the royal lady, by transferring the political power to her – this can only be done if the Minister is unaware that he no longer possesses it. Dupin comments that it’s a popular view to think that it is easy to fall into moral ruin, but he has no pity for the fallen. Dupin’s motivations come into focus in this part. His goal is not so much justice as it is a quest for revenge and success. It is difficult to sort him into a category of good or bad. His morality seems to follow his analytical mind, he favors sense and rationality but also his emotions. Dupin is, however, curious to know how the Minister will react to the replacement letter, which he filled with a message. He explains now that the minister once personally wronged him and he had warned him at the time that he would remember it. So, wanting to give the minister a clue as to his identity, he wrote a single phrase on the letter, “Un dessein si funeste, S'il nest digne d'Atree, est digne de Thyeste,” which translates to “So baneful a scheme, if not worthy of Atreus, is worthy of Thyestes.” This is from a story by Crebillon about a pair of brothers, who both wrong each other. Download 0.58 Mb. Share with your friends:
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