26 pages • 52 minutes read
The Purloined Letter
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Character Analysis
C. Auguste Dupin
As the protagonist of all three of Poe’s ratiocination stories, C. Auguste Dupin is the prototype of the literary amateur detective. His methods for crime solving are unconventional and often go above and beyond the capabilities of the police.
“The Purloined Letter” contains no physical description of Dupin. He is represented as an intelligent, pipe-smoking gentleman who spends most of his time in leisurely, intellectual conversations with his friend. Dupin considers himself both a poet and mathematician who disputes “the availability, and thus the value, of that reason which is cultivated in any especial form other than the abstractly logical” (18). He utilizes various analogies to explain his methods of investigation to the narrator, all of which give the reader direct insight into his way of thinking. The most significant is the story of the schoolboy who consistently triumphed at even and odd, which demonstrates how Dupin seeks to inhabit the mindset of his “opponent.”
Also important are Dupin’s motives for helping to solve the crime of the purloined letter. Essentially, the narrative proposes three specific things that motivate Dupin. The first is a monetary reward, as the prefect offers him 50,000 francs for the recovery of the letter. Another motivation is political. Dupin claims to be acting as an agent of the queen and hopes that the recovery of the letter will lead to the minister’s political destruction. Finally, there is the motive of revenge. According to Dupin, the minister once did him an “evil turn,” and although the specifics of it are never revealed, it was significant enough that Dupin makes his revenge known with the quote from Crébillon.
The Minister D——
The antagonist in “The Purloined Letter” is the thief, Minister D——. Again, there is a complete absence of physical description, and everything the reader learns about him comes from the prefect and Dupin. Monsieur G—— describes the minister as a man “who dares all things, those unbecoming as well as those becoming a man” (8): He is bold and perceptive, and he is clearly willing to take great risks to further his political career. The fact that he decides, on the spur of the moment, to steal a letter from under the queen’s nose demonstrates both his boldness and his desperation. That he has managed to evade the police for an extended amount of time shows that he is also very astute.
Once Dupin successfully solves the mystery, the reader receives additional information about Minister D——. Dupin confesses that he knows the minister well and that “[a]s a poet and mathematician, he would reason well” (17). He describes him as “daring” and “dashing” with a “discriminating ingenuity.” In the end, the minister is only defeated by Dupin’s ability to identify with him and discern where he has truly “hidden” the letter. He is a foil and double for the genius Dupin—someone who applies his intellect to nakedly callous and self-serving ends.
Monsieur G——
Monsieur G——, the prefect of the Parisian police, is a static character in that he does not evolve or change throughout the story. He has been charged with recovering the letter that was stolen from the queen, yet he is unable to accomplish this task due to his adherence to the police’s standard search procedures. He demonstrates his thoroughness as a detective by performing two exhaustive searches of the minister’s residence; however, as Dupin explains, while his measures “were good in their kind, and well executed […] he perpetually errs by being too deep or too shallow, for the matter in hand” (15). In particular, the prefect refuses to consider how the minister’s character would influence his choice of hiding place.
The prefect is ultimately successful in recovering the letter thanks to the astuteness of Dupin. As he alludes numerous to the monetary reward being offered, the prefect’s desire to solve the case is likely financial (at least in part).
The Narrator
The unnamed, first-person narrator in the story is a friend of both Dupin and Monsieur G——. In the general sense, his role is to relay the story to readers, but within the narrative, his primary function is to ask clarifying questions and make comments as the prefect and Dupin discuss the case. Based on these questions and comments, one can infer that while he is not as close-minded as the prefect, he is not as intelligent and perceptive as Dupin.
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By Edgar Allan Poe
