Reciprocity : Similarities between Dupin and Minister D–
The Purloined Letter, the last of the three earliest detective stories by Edgar Allan Poe, is prestigious in its sophisticated, insightful plot arrangement and character establishment. The plot mostly dwells on the retrieval of the confidential letter of the Queen, which was hidden by the counter-figure, Minister D–. The police officer, Perfect G–, exerted to complete this crucial mission by investigating every corner he and his colleagues could, whereas they ended up finding nothing (776–777).
In opposed to the dilemma that Perfect G– was confronting, detective Dupin turned out to complete this mission in ease, and took advantage of it, that is, being paid by Perfect G–, for he solved the problem that was disturbing the police officer so much. The astonishing similarity between Dupin and the suspect, Minister D–, accounts for the clever detective’s success of retrieving the letter of the Queen.
Needless to say, Perfect G– is a flawless image and figure of how a skillful, experienced police should behave. Nevertheless, Poe has utilized such condition and added a twist to it–it is the “perfection” of such a well-behaved police officer that confined Perfect G– himself in the predicament that he could not break through his own schema of thinking of how a suspect would think and thus take further action. On the other hand, Dupin, as an independent detective, not being constrained by the conventional criteria of a decent police, had a rather flexible perception of how a thief may presumably think and behave. In accordance with Dupin’s interaction with Minister D– and Perfect G–, it could be assumed that there are subtle resemblances between the two seemingly unalike personas. To illustrate, below are some keen perspectives that can be discussed and put into further investigation of the similarities between the two characters.
To start with, according to the depiction in The Purloined letter, both Dupin and D– shared common personal characteristics. To illustrate, D–, the thief, was described as possessing the eyes of a “lynx”, a kind of cat that is known for its keen visual ability (774). Namely, he was able to distinguish at once that the letter was a confidential, personal property, and for the purpose of concealing a secret. On the other hand, Dupin had a pair of keen eyes as well, he could grasp the target easily, and simultaneously analyze the value and the importance during the mission (783).
Minister D– could comprehend and make proper interpretation at once of what he had seen, and utilized his intelligence as a cunning thief, putting the clues together to form a favorable condition for his own sake– which was astonishingly similar to Dupin’s strategy as well. He was also a figure of possessing keen insight through obscure observations, and was able to group the materials together to meet his own favor. They were both extremely clever and prudent, whereas Perfect G–, on the contrary, was too meticulous, clinging to the details that were not relevant.
Secondly, the skillful detective had noticed a decisive value that the police officer overlooked–how Minister D–, the thief, was thinking the way that a police usually would follow. In order to contend against the Minister, Dupin also altered how he thought–he simply abandoned how a detective was “expected” to think, and put himself in the thief’s position. They share a collective intelligence, for “sympathy” was the core concept of this mental competence. Both Dupin and Minister D– attempted to think the way their fiends might have thought, and the result was that the one who possessed a more superior, flexible thought would win such psychological battle.
Accordingly, the Minister was unable to identify that Dupin noticed his strategy of thinking like a police, while the detective was actually using the exact same pattern of thought to subdue him. Furthermore, viewing in a more comprehensive scale, the prestigious Canadian scholar and literary critic Peter Swirski has stated that, Dupin and Minister D– were actually in a two-person game in terms of the Game Theory[1], and features reciprocal awareness that they were consciously involved in the competition of achieving interests for their own purposes (71). This assumption precisely provided a reasonable theoretical basis for the interactions between the two, since Dupin and Minister were both players in this “psychological game,” and encountering each other with strategic strengths, trying to maximize the plausible gains through intentional manipulation of thoughts.
Last but not least, both Minister D– and Dupin were actually profit-oriented while making a decision to launch certain deeds. Minister D– had not been intentional to fetch the Queen’s letter, which was presumably from a secret lover other than the King, until he found that there were potential profits and benefits if he has possessed such evidence of the Queen’s affair. Driven by the desire of acquiring benefits from the Queen, Minister D– decided to steal the letter, in order to serve as a bargaining chip between him and the Queen. It can be deduced that if the letter were nothing than a “letter,” then Minister D– might not have had the drive to commit such a crime, since there would be a prospective sanction on him for stealing a royal member’s property.
However, under the circumstance that the benefit of suppressing a figure of authority was so tempting that he neglected such risk and chosen to perform the deed. Likewise, for Dupin, the considerable amount of money Perfect G– provided was the drive for him to retrieve the stolen letter. Prior to the plead of Perfect G–, Dupin had already known the conspiracy of Minister D–, who tricked the police by utilizing their fixed perception towards thieves and crimes, but he decided not to assist Perfect G–, and reluctant to provide him a minute hint of the retrieval of the letter. It was not until the incentive, the money, appeared that Dupin determined to give Perfect G– a hand.
Nevertheless, Dupin did not do this for helping the official police, but for his own benefit, which was astonishingly similar to Minister D–, who was profit-oriented as well. Both of the figures would prudently evaluate the current situation, accompanied by considering the plausible successive effects, before the implementation of thoughts in terms of their own favor. In other words, if they could not perceive any profits in the event, they would choose not to be involved in the incident, no matter how the condition would change drastically if they intervene in time.
Aside from the aforementioned similarities, there are different perspectives of the resemblance between Dupin and Minister D– as well. Jacques Lacan also stated that the letter itself was a “pure signifier[2],” whose content was not known by the readers, but its presence served as a significant image to the whole story (11–61). This “pure signifier” was shuttling through three subjects, which were the ones who could not perceive anything (the King and Perfect G–), the ones who could perceive that the first subjects were unable to identify anything (the Queen and Minister D–), and eventually, the ones that could observe what the former two subjects have seen, and thus take advantages on it (Minister D– and Dupin), that is, the availability of understanding the truth (44).
According to Lacan’s point, it could be inferred that the two were both in the position of the third subjects, which were in a relatively superior status than that of the first and second subjects, since such status guaranteed Dupin’s identification with the Minister. By being in a similar position, Dupin was able to see the blind points that Perfect G– neglected. Furthermore, Lacan’s point was embodied by “…the more I reflected upon the daring, dashing, discriminating ingenuity of D–; upon the fact that the document must always have been at hand,…” (783). The King simply knew nothing about the letter, Perfect G– was required to solve the Queen’s dilemma, Minister D– perceived that he could make good use of the letter while fooling Perfect as a second subject, whereas Dupin, although implementing a similar pathway of thought as the Minister, had the full sight of the incident, and thus could exploit his superior position to achieve what he desired.
In accordance with the arguments examined above, I have come to the conclusion that all in all, both Dupin and Minister are heroic-like figures in the contemporary reality, for they have had surpassing intelligence, flexible and sympathetic mind, and possess highly sensitive identification between each other. The developments of the two characters were parallel as well, while “theft,” and “retrieval of the letter” both involved. Interestingly, Dupin was not retrieving the letter in order to obtain justice, rather, essentially, they were executing identical deeds, and were fully aware of their remarkable competence of observation and perception towards minute hints in an incident. Even though they noticed that what they were attempting to do was against the moral standards, they seemingly could not ignore the potential profit in the acts.
Nevertheless, it is truly extraordinary that Dupin and Minister D– could break away from their social characters as a “thief” or a “detective,” mimicking and sympathizing of how their target characters would think or behave, which built up the core value of The Purloined Letter — reciprocity between the thief and the detective in terms of psychological wrestling.
[1]The analysis of a situation that associates with conflicting interests in terms of gains and losses among players with opposing positions.
[2]A “signifier” is the phonological element of sign, the mental image of such a sound. A “pure signifier” means that it is a “signifier without signified.”
Lacan, Jacques. “Le Seminaire sur ‘La Lettre Volée’.”Ecrits, 1956, pp. 11–61.
Poe, Edgar Allan. The Norton Anthology of American Literature, shorter 9th ed., vol. 1, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 2017, pp. 772–785.
Swirski, Peter. “Literary Studies and Literary Pragmatics: The Case of ‘The Purloined Letter’.” Substance, vol. 26, №3, Issue 81: 25thAnniversary Issue, 1996, pp. 69–89.
