THE GOLD BUG
-E.A. Poe
In many of Poe's short
stories, such as "The Tell-Tale Heart," the narrators are madmen and
murderers who fail to disguise their lack of rationality with a discussion of
their thought processes. However, their stories inevitably reveal gaps in their
chains of thought that speak to their descent into immorality and selfishness.
In many cases, insanity is interlocked with the narrators' emotional egotism;
they are incapable of empathizing with others and think only of their own
desire to satisfy their honor or their need to end the disruptions to their
lives. On the other side of the equation lie Poe's rational characters, who are
capable of consciously setting aside their own emotions in order to logically
solve their problems. For example, C. Auguste Dupin's skill lies in being able
to empathize with others in order to solve seemingly impossible cases. Where
Poe's irrational characters create confusion out of order, Dupin is capable of
reversing the process.
In the case of the
narrator of "The Tell-Tale Heart," the protagonist's declarations of
oversensitivity are merely a thin disguise for insanity. In other stories,
obsession is driven by fear: in "The Premature Burial," the narrator
develops catalepsy and begins to take myriad precautions because of his overwhelming
fear of being buried alive. Some characters become obsessed by passion, as in
the case of the painter in "The Oval Portrait," who essentially
abandons his wife for his art. In many of Poe's stories, the narrators'
obsessions lead to death and destruction, but Poe also belies this conclusion
in "The Premature Burial," in which the narrator's obsessions come to
an abrupt end when his fretting leads him to drastically misinterpret an event
in his life.
The story is told by an
unnamed narrator, a physician on whose word we can presumably rely. It concerns
an extraordinary treasure hunt, conducted by its main character, William
Legrand that took place many years before the present time of the narration.
Legrand, we are told, was a descendant of an old Huguenot family from New
Orleans. Like Poe himself, Legrand was well-educated, but having experienced
some unspecified reversal in his financial fortunes, he was, at the story's
start, a poor man. He was also something of a misanthrope, living in voluntary
seclusion in a small hut that he built on Sullivan's Island a short distance
from the Atlantic Coast city of Charleston, South Carolina, with his servant,
the freed slave Jupiter, and a Newfoundland dog. We are told in advance that
Legrand was given to sudden mood swings, alternating between enthusiasm and
melancholy.
Legrand was visited at his
abode by the narrator on an unusually cold day in October, and the narrator was
at first pleased to find his host in an elevated mood. Legrand was excited by his
recent discovery of a rare "gold bug” that had distinctive markings on its
shell. He could not produce the specimen at the time, however, because he had
lent it to a lieutenant at nearby Fort Moultrie. Legrand said that he could
draw a picture of the insect for the narrator, but finding no paper in the
drawer of his writing desk he took a scrap of what turns out to be parchment
from his pocket. Legrand completed his sketch and handed it to the narrator,
but as the guest held the parchment in his hand, Legrand's dog entered the
room, jumped on the narrator, and the paper came close to a fire that had been
lit to warm the hut on this unseasonably cold afternoon. What the narrator saw
was not the outline of an insect, but the image of a death's head or human
skull. Legrand was disconcerted by this turn of events. But as he was about to
throw drawing in fire, Legrand noticed something. He locked the drawing in his
desk drawer without further comment. The prudent narrator sensed that his
presence had disturbed Legrand and left.
About a month later, the
narrator was visited in his Charleston offices by the ex-slave Jupiter. He bore
a written message from his master which asked the narrator to come at once to
Sullivan's Island. Legrand gave no reason for the request beyond indicating
that business of the "highest importance" was at hand. For his part,
Jupiter was convinced that Legrand had gone mad, ascribing this dementia to
Legrand's having been bitten by "de goole bug" when they first found
it. The narrator agreed to go to the island, but when he saw a scythe and some
shovels in Legrand's skiff, he became alarmed; he nevertheless went to
Sullivan's Island to prevent this madman from doing harm to him or others.
Arriving at Legrand's humble abode, the narrator found his friend in an excited
state of mind. Legrand proclaimed that the gold bug would make his fortune and
then asked the narrator to accompany him and Jupiter on a nocturnal expedition
to the mainland. By this juncture, the narrator was sure that Legrand has
indeed gone insane. When he asked about the purpose of their excursion,
Legrand's reply was merely "'we shall see.'"
The three-man party proceeded
in the skiff to the nearby mainland. With Legrand swinging the dead gold bug on
a string attached to a stick, they used the scythe to cut through dense
vegetation and finally arrived at a tall tulip tree. Legrand ordered Jupiter to
climb the tree up to a certain branch, taking the gold bug with him. On the
seventh branch up,...
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