Thursday, October 11, 2007
The Purloined Letter
The story starts off with the Prefect of Police in Paris visiting a man named Dupin with a problem. He explains to him that a letter has been stolen and is being used to blackmail the person from whom it was stolen. He introduces him to find the letter since the owner of the letter is an important government figure. The Prefect believes Minister D has the letter, so he searches his home thoroughly, but finds nothing. Dupin suggests they research the house. A month later, Monsieur G returns, but finds nothing. This time, he says that he will pay fifty thousand francs to anyone who can obtain the letter for him. Dupin invites him to write the check; when this is done, Dupin hands the Prefect the letter without any further comment. The story doesn't have a lot of reader detective work that they have to follow throughout the story, the story more revolves around Dupin doing all of the detective work and we as the reader understanding his logic of detective work.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
follow up your last thought a bit more...alos, consider some of this: What are some socio-cultural, philosophical, etc., issues suggested by the story. Think about how it questions methods of investigation, esp scientific or "objective "strategies of knowledge acquisition. Also, what does this story say about various ways of seeing? what determines how we see what we see? What might the letter's drift also suggest about communication, and its (potential) misdirection? What does it suggest about the relationship between information and power?
Many people do not see the obvious which can be right in from of them like in this story. Was that one of the points that the author was trying to make? Is the author making the point that people don't really communicate with each other?
Post a Comment