The Importance of the Individual and of Individuality

In "The Purloined Letter," Poe creates a study of ratiocination, presenting a mystery which reason alone has been unable to solve. The commonplace methods of police logic concur failed, and C. Auguste Dupin is asked to lend his expertise to finding the stolen letter. In the introductory scene, the Prefect of Police tells Dupin how they fall in already anticipateed the room of the thief, Minister D---, and how the letter was not found. It is made clear that the search has been most thorough, including searching the person of the thief at business firm and elsewhere. The letter still has not been found.

Dupin, of course, is French and not American, except Poe most certainly is and is the one who sees the power of intuition and imagination. He explains his method to his companion, the narrator of the story, by referring to a schoolboy who could guess the come of marbles based on his ability to measure the sound judgment of his opponents in a schoolyard game. This sort of determination seems based on pure logic, but in fact it also involves the meaning(a) step of measuring the intelligence level of opponents through elaborate observation, an art rather than a science.

Dupin explains this procedure in wrong of what the boy told him:

When I wish to find out how wise, or how stupid, or how good, or how wicked is any one, or what his thoughts at the moment, I fashion the expression of my f

Dupin says that the Paris police have failed in their search because they have not placed themselves in the position of the thief and have not tried to think as he does. If he were a different sort of thief, one little intelligent, and less imaginative, they might have found the letter through the tramp methods they have used. Indeed, he says that the thief is successful because he is a poet rather than a mathematician--it is his poetic imagination that has enabled him to outsmart the police.

C. Solutions reached through imagination and mathematics

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