The Virtuality of the Gaze in the Game of "The Purloined Letter"

This essay explores how Edgar Allan Poe's detective story "The Purloined Letter" is related with the gaze beyond the Symbolic order. Lacan applies psychoanalytic theory to the story. He also argues that the gaze can be the objet petit a in terms of the visual. For the meaningful discourse between Lacan and Deleuze, I attempt to relocate the gaze in the realm of the virtual, since the gaze belongs to the field of the Other, not an actually seen gaze. The relationship between characters echoes the virtuality of the gaze in the Real. In other words, for the characters it is a matter of virtually being seen, not a matter of actually seeing. In the games of "The Purloined Letter," players wrestle with the guessing of odds and evens or worrying about seeing or being seen. In the case of the guessing game, the player has to deceive the opponent's eye and distracts the other's sight. Additionally, the fictional games the main characters play centering on the location of the letter is another guessing game. The virtual realm of the sight is the Real beyond the Symbolic order or the actual. Therefore, the game between Minister D- and Dupin shows us how to the actualization of the gaze is possible from the perspective of Deleuzian virtual. Hence, we can see the virtuality of the gaze in "The Purloined Letter."