The Purloined Letter

The Paris police have searched one man’s house every night for three months. They have probed the cushions with needles, checked every chair joint under a microscope, and lifted every carpet, and they are certain the stolen letter is not there. C. Auguste Dupin listens, smokes, and tells the Prefect to search again. A month later he takes the letter out of his own desk and hands it over in exchange for a check. The story is short on action and long on talk, because the real contest is a battle of minds between Dupin and a thief as clever as he is.

What happens in The Purloined Letter

On a windy autumn evening in Paris, the narrator is smoking in the dark with his friend C. Auguste Dupin, thinking over their earlier cases, when Monsieur G., the Prefect of the Paris police, arrives to ask Dupin’s opinion. The case, he says, is simple and yet baffling. A letter of great importance has been stolen from the royal apartments. While its owner, a royal lady, was reading it in her boudoir, another exalted person came in from whom she wished to hide it, so she left it on a table with the address showing. The Minister D— then entered, recognized the handwriting, read her confusion, laid a similar letter beside hers, and walked off with it, leaving his own behind. She saw the theft but dared not speak, and the Minister has used his hold over her for political ends ever since. For three months the Prefect has secretly searched the Minister’s hotel every night, taking furniture apart, probing cushions with needles, examining every joint with a microscope, and even searching the two houses next door. The Minister has twice been waylaid and searched. Nothing has turned up. Dupin’s only advice is to search again. A month later the Prefect returns, defeated, and says he would give a check for fifty thousand francs to anyone who could get him the letter. Dupin tells him to write it. When it is signed, Dupin takes the letter from a writing desk and hands it over, and the stunned Prefect rushes from the house. Dupin then explains. The police are skilled, but they search only where they themselves would hide something. The Minister, a poet as well as a mathematician, expected to be searched and so did not hide the letter at all. Wearing green spectacles as cover for his roving eyes, Dupin called on him and saw a soiled, half-torn letter in a cheap card-rack hanging below the mantelpiece. Its seal and address were different, but its chafed edges showed it had been turned inside out and re-sealed. Dupin left a gold snuff-box on the table, which gave him a reason to call again. The next day a man in his pay fired a musket in the street, and while the Minister looked out of the window, Dupin swapped the letter for a copy. Inside the copy he wrote two lines from the French playwright Crébillon in his own hand, which the Minister knows.

Where and when The Purloined Letter happens

Timeline the story arc, beat by beat

1. The visit
   An odd case

   On a dark autumn evening the Prefect of the Paris police interrupts Dupin and the narrator and laughs at the idea that his puzzle may be too simple.

2. The theft
   A letter taken in plain sight

   The Prefect explains that the Minister D— stole a compromising letter from a royal lady’s boudoir in front of her, leaving a worthless letter of his own.

3. The search
   Three months of needles and microscopes

   The Prefect describes searching the Minister’s hotel inch by inch every night, and Dupin’s only advice is to search it all again.

4. The payment
   Fifty thousand francs

   A month later Dupin has the Prefect sign a check for fifty thousand francs and hands him the letter from his own desk.

5. The method
   Even and odd

   Dupin explains the police’s mistake by describing a schoolboy who won every marble by matching his mind to his opponent’s.

6. The discovery
   The card-rack

   Dupin tells how, behind green spectacles, he spotted a soiled, torn letter in the Minister’s card-rack and left his snuff-box behind.

7. The swap
   Gunfire in the street

   He reveals that the next day, while a hired man fired a musket outside, he replaced the letter with a copy holding lines from Crébillon.

Characters and how they connect

Character Relationships who connects to whom, and the themes that bind them

Themes in The Purloined Letter what the story is really about

Symbols & motifs

Conflicts

Literary devices

Observer narrator

An unnamed friend tells the story and admires the detective from outside, the pattern Arthur Conan Doyle later used for Watson and Sherlock Holmes.

Delayed explanation

The solution comes first and the method afterward, so the reader, like the Prefect, is stunned before being shown how it was done.

Irony

The Prefect roars with laughter when Dupin suggests the mystery is too plain, and that is exactly the answer.

Allusion

Poe draws on a Latin motto he credits to Seneca, the doctor Abernethy, the Procrustean bed and Crébillon’s revenge tragedy about Atreus and Thyestes to decorate Dupin’s arguments.

Parallelism

The two thefts mirror each other: each thief swaps one letter for another under the owner’s nose.

Important quotes

The ending of The Purloined Letter, explained

The story ends with Dupin explaining why he swapped the letter for a copy instead of simply grabbing it. One reason is safety: the Minister is a desperate man with loyal servants, and Dupin might not have left the house alive. The other is politics. Dupin sides with the lady, and now the power has changed hands without the Minister knowing it. Believing he still holds the letter, he will go on making demands, and when the lady finally defies him and he opens it, he will be ruined. Dupin has no pity for him and calls him an unprincipled man of genius. The last surprise is what Dupin put inside the copy. The Minister once did him an evil turn in Vienna, so Dupin copied two lines from Crébillon’s tragedy Atrée et Thyeste (1707), which Dupin calls simply Atrée, in his own handwriting, which the Minister knows. In the old myth Atreus and Thyestes are brothers who take terrible revenge on each other, and the lines say that so deadly a plan, if not worthy of Atreus, is worthy of Thyestes. The Minister will learn who beat him at the worst possible moment. Readers disagree about how to take this ending. Many read it as the triumph of pure reasoning, a model for every later detective who sees what everyone else misses. Others notice how much Dupin has in common with the thief: both are clever, both use disguise and substitution, and Dupin is paid, partisan and settling a private score. Because the narrator mentioned earlier, in the middle of Dupin’s explanation, that the Minister has a brother, and the myth is about brothers, some readers have wondered whether the feud is closer than Dupin admits, though the story never says. The contents of the letter are never revealed, which later drew a famous seminar from the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan about how a message can shape the people who hold it without ever being read, and a famous reply from the philosopher Jacques Derrida questioning Lacan’s reading.

Common misreadings

Test yourself

Someone important has had a secret letter stolen by a sneaky government minister. The police search his whole house for months, even checking every chair leg with a microscope, but they cannot find it. A clever man named Dupin figures out that the thief knew the police would search everywhere, so he did not hide it at all. He just made it look dirty and unimportant and stuck it in a letter holder on the wall. Dupin visits, spots it, and comes back the next day to swap it for a fake while a hired man makes a noise outside. He leaves a secret message in the fake so the thief will know who tricked him. The lesson is that sometimes the best hiding place is right in front of everyone.

Flashcards flip, self-grade, and the deck remembers what you know

Compare & connect the story universe

Discussion & essay prompts for class, or your next paper

Key questions students ask

• Where is the letter hidden in The Purloined Letter
• How does Dupin find the purloined letter
• Why couldn’t the police find the purloined letter
• What does Dupin write in the fake letter
• What is the theme of The Purloined Letter
• Who is Minister D in The Purloined Letter