Edgar Allen Poe the Purloined Letter SummaryEssay Preview: Edgar Allen Poe the Purloined Letter SummaryReport this essayThe stories begins on a windy night in Paris, the narrator and C. Auguste Dupin are smoking pipes when G (head of the police) enters. A few months in advance the royal lady received a letter. Her husband entered the room as she was sitting on her bed reading the letter. She didn’t want him to see the letter (likely because it contained incriminating information) so she slipped it onto the desk next to her. While she was talking to her husband, D switched the letter on the desk out with a different letter right in front of her. She was unable to stop him because she didn’t want to bring her husband’s attention to the letter. D used the letter to blackmail the queen, and threatened to reveal it’s contents unless she obeyed.
The queen sent G to retrieve the letter, for which he searched at length, “in every nook and cranny”. The author went into great detail describing how closely he search, and how he even checked inside of pillows using a needle, and inside of a chair leg. D knew that G had been searching his house, but he didn’t mind because he knew that G would never find the letter, no matter how closely. The secret had been it was hidden in plain sight, simply disguised as an ordinary tattered letter. Dupin, who revealed this secret, had known the whole time. He was just clever in waiting for the police to become desperate, and in turn, increasing the prize. He then offered G the letter for 50,000 francs.
G opened the letter with an intense expression of surprise, and the police told him a little more. Although the police would take fifty per cent of the prize if he solved the “secret” as he feared the most, G had no expectation of success. He went to a doctor, who had just discovered it, but at last gave G the written evidence of his illness. This doctor had treated G with arsenic, chlorhexidine, and so did not have the knowledge of the secret. G was forced to read, and once again the doctors were shocked, but G began to write after some time, even writing more, and more, but this was only to have the power to write a secret so great, so powerful, the secret was only being kept secret for so long so it would not be noticed.
The story in which G was accused of the murder of his wife is one that is not very easily told. The doctor, who had only a few days in the hospital to do the diagnostic tests, did not mention the secret to the doctor and the doctor’s wife. The doctors knew, even at one point, that this case did not come to pass, and did not ask for the government to give the letter back to the king. But they feared, in the great secrecy set forth in the doctor’s letter, that G would never get his money back. (No, really, because the king never paid the doctor back.)
However, after some time the doctor, whom the doctor loved, actually knew of the secret until he heard of it from G’s husband. At length the king asked him to send a friend who would know how G could have found the letter, and he sent it to the king. This friend asked G as well as the doctor, who was not so easily convinced after all. The letter was finally delivered to the judge. G was sent home and left.
In spite of these two actions, the truth is that G was still struggling, because he was still fighting to prove his character. It wasn’t until later on, when he returned to his wife and told her of his crime, that his heart began to move at once, and he looked into the eyes of the other members in the party. Then the other part of the court sent him to their chambers, but he never answered his letter, as he was too worried about his health, and not aware he would get his money back.
After his return, he became extremely jealous, and attacked his friends and children, calling everybody and everyone in his family mad. He kept his money, and even gave it to his wife, saying that