Deception In The Purloined Letter

In Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Purloined Letter,” deception, revenge, and logic vs. creative thinking were among many of the themes that were present in the story. These themes are important in the story because Dupin was deceptive to multiple people and took revenge on Minister D. Monsieur, the Prefect, searched for the letter using logical thinking and on the other hand, Dupin looked for the letter using imagination and creative thinking. Dupin deceived his friend, by not telling his friend that he had the letter. Dupin deceived Minister D by replacing the letter while Minister D was distracted. Dupin also deceived the Prefect by giving him suggestion to search for the letter again even though Dupin took the letter and made him search for about
First, Dupin deceives his friend (who is also the narrator of the story) by not telling his friend that he has the letter. His friend did not know that Dupin visited Minister D and replaced the purloined letter with an identical letter that he made. Dupin also deceived the Prefect. He made the Prefect look for the letter again for about a month even though he had the letter. Dupin wanted the reward that the Prefect offered, which was fifty thousand francs. After hearing the story that Prefect told him about the stolen letter, who the suspect is, and how much the reward was, Dupin bought some time from the Prefect to get the letter himself. He got the letter and waited for the Prefect to return to him after finishing the search again. When the Prefect returned, Dupin told him to write the check and after the Prefect signs it, he will hand over the letter to Prefect. Dupin made sure that even his friend did not know about the letter, maybe because his friend could have taken it and gotten the reward. Dupin also deceived Minister D by taking the purloined letter from Minister D without him knowing about it by creating a distraction. Nandu Koni states in his article, “Edgar Allan Poe also uses characters actions to develop Dupin and shows how Dupin in the beginning is credible and trustworthy; however towards the end he deceives everyone with the overcoming emotion of greediness” (Koni). Dupin’s deception to the Prefect was
Poe exposes these themes in “The Purloined Letter,” through all the characters. Poe used deception through Dupin by having Dupin deceive his friend, the Prefect, and Minister D. His friend did not knew about the purloined letter that he had already found. Dupin did not tell his friend maybe because his friend would have turned in the stolen letter to the police and collected the reward money. He suggested the Prefect to go back and look for the letter again, which gave him time to find the letter himself and get fifty thousand francs from the Prefect. He tricked Minister D by locating the purloined letter first, then replacing it with an identical letter by creating a distraction from a man that he paid. Revenge was another theme which Poe reveals through Dupin and Minister D. Minister D once did something bad to Dupin back in Vienna. Now Dupin got him back for that evil thing that he had done by taking away the letter that Minister D had. There were two ways that were used to locate the stolen letter. The Prefect’s way was logical thinking which is common sense. He thought like a thief and where Minister D would hide the letter. Whereas Minister D knew that the police would think he hid the letter in a secure place but instead he hid the letter in plain view. Dupin knew Minister D was a mathematician and thought like him to find the letter. These were the three major themes that Poe used in “The Purloined