Power In Dupin's The Purrloined Letter

Complicated Simplicity Trained professionals, armed with microscopes and overwhelming skill, could not find the purloined letter anywhere in the hotel, though it rested in a card-rack in plain sight. Edgar Allen Poe wrote “The Purloined Letter” in 1844. In this story, the Prefect of the Police asks the detective Dupin for aid in solving a perplexing case. The Minister steals a letter of value from a woman and hides it somewhere in his hotel, planning to blackmail the victim. Through the themes of trickery, logic, and power, complexity becomes simple, while simplicity transforms into a bafflement that only the brilliant Dupin can clear. The Minister used trickery to obtain his goal of power over the woman, but got tricked in return. Using

He almost succeeded because the experienced police took “it for granted that ALL men proceed to conceal a letter, not exactly in a gimlet-hole bored in a chair-leg, but, at least, in some out-of-the-way hole or corner suggested by the same tenor of thought which would urge a man to secrete a letter in a gimlet-hole bored in a chair-leg.” The Minister knew this, and placed the letter in a card-rack, an obvious spot that the police overlooked because they did not anticipate the complicated thinking that compelled the Minister to conceal the letter in a simple hiding spot. Dupin, however, figured out the Minister’s plan, and wearing a pair of spectacles, went straight to the hotel. There, he complained to the Minister about his poor vision, and behind the glasses, he “cautiously and thoroughly surveyed the whole apartment, while seemingly intent only upon the conversation.” Presently, he spotted the purloined letter, whose appearance he memorized. Then he left, after purposefully leaving behind a gold snuff-box, which he returned to get the next day. While he and the Minister talked, “a loud report, as if of a pistol, was heard immediately beneath the windows of the hotel, and was succeeded by a series of fearful screams, and the shoutings of a terrified mob.” At this, the Minister ran to the

When the characters have power, they have the letter, and in order to have the letter, they use trickery and logic. These three main themes connect to each other as they pass from person to person. The characters continuously try to outsmart each other through reasoning and craftiness, and consequently, the meaning of complexity changes to simplicity, and simplicity to complexity because they expect complicated tricks from each other, so the basic ones go unheeded, causing confusion. Dupin makes an exception to this, however, and restores the purloined letter, despite the complicated