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Analysis Of The Poem ' Purloined Letter '

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Purloined Letter Essay

How does Poe bring about the idea of superiority in logical thinking over analysis of hard facts in his short story Purloined Letter? Poe employs a technique of keeping the audience in the dark about what the main character is thinking. There is a difference drawn between characters that use logic and characters that use intuition. Intuition is always shown to have its short comings and logical thinking is shown to get the main characters further into solving a case.
In the Purloined Letter Poe gives the reader little detail of how Dupin is solving the case in his head, at first. Dupin is a character that doesn’t rely on the plain facts in front of him. He uses psychological analysis, forensics and looks deeper into the details of a crime. Throughout the whole short story the Prefect of the police is explaining how detailed his investigation was and how baffled he still was. This gives us the sense that the Prefect is not in the least unintelligent. At the end of his explanation Dupin already has the letter and hands it over to the Prefect for the some of his earnings.
“In that case,” replied Dupin, opening a drawer, and producing a cheque-book, “you may as well fill me up a cheque for the amount mentioned. When you have signed it, I will hand you the letter.” (Poe 510). It gives the reader a sense of bewilderment and left wondering how he did it. Then Dupin goes into a detailed explanation of how he figured out where the letter was hidden through

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