Title: The Gold Bug (1843)
Author: Edgar Allan Poe
Culture: American
Type: Short Story (45 pg)
Date Finished: 24th January 2010
The short story The Gold Bug by Edgar Allan Poe is about the cryptic adventure, set in early 19th century America, South Carolina, undergone by the unnamed narrator, his friend Mr. William Legrand and his Negro slave, Jupiter. On Sullivan’s Island, the home of Legrand, a mysterious gold beetle is found when Legrand is bitten by it, and then Legrand is seemed by Jupiter to be going insane. This was not the case, but nevertheless Legrand’s unnamed friend is summoned to visit, and visit he does. The gold bug leads Legrand and, somewhat collaterally, his friend to believe the gold bug is a clue that leads the buried treasure of Captain Kidd, and so they take upon themselves the task of deciphering the mysterious message.
I found the use of cryptography in Poe’s tale pleasing in the sense that its inclusion created a new dimension in short story writing, and for this it was one of his only stories to be greatly heralded by the public of his time. Cryptography is a form of secret writing, using a code of symbols to replace the real alphabet, and is highly difficult to decrypt and master the use of, which is why it was so admired. After the narrator and Legrand progress with their ratiocination (the use of reason and detecting to resolve a problem), they discover a substitution cipher, using symbols for letters, mainly numbers, question marks, crosses and semi-colons, which they decipher and discover a puzzle describing landmarks that will lead them to the treasure:
“A good glass in the bishop's hostel in the devil's seat
forty-one degrees and thirteen minutes northeast and by north
main branch seventh limb east side shoot from the left eye of the death's-head
a bee line from the tree through the shot fifty feet out.”

They solve the puzzle using ratiocination, and find the hidden treasure, with a few mild mistakes along the way. This constant puzzle solving with the use of basic human logical thinking is impressive in that it brings to the wider-world the tool-use of the mind, which is obviously preached by Poe to be very important in the development of society, as it can acquire great rewards that serve human existence, such as the gleaming treasure found in this tale, that symbolises human gain, human evolution.

At the beginning of most of Poe’s tales there is a quote from another writer, or a select line from a poem or story of Poe’s, that illustrates to the reader a fluent theme that will be discovered in the story. This, to me, is greatly entertaining, as it is so very stylistic of Poe and his analytic and intellectually colourful temperament. The line used at the beginning of The Gold Bug is shown in smaller writing than the story placed above the first paragraph, underneath the title, as most are, and says “What ho! What ho! this fellow is dancing mad! He hath been bitten by the Tarantula. (All in the Wrong)” Poe’s stylistic element is fairly obvious in this line, as it uses antique language and very unique sentence forms. What I find interesting in this line is that it foreshadows the theme of madness present in the gold bug, specifically the madness that seemingly came upon Legrand after he was bitten by the gold bug, and that he was treated as a madman in his pursuit of treasure which the narrator did not full-heartedly believe to be in existence. Despite the mad assertions about this “dancing mad” fellow, he was proved to be extremely passionate and perhaps eccentric in his desire, as he found the treasure he longed to find.