The Gold Bug: Short Story

By Edgar Allan Poe

On Sullivan’s Island in Charleston Harbor, William Legrand is—literally and figuratively—bitten by a gold bug and, thereafter, he becomes fixated on the idea of lost treasure. With his servant, Jupiter, a mysterious cipher, and the gold bug itself tied to a bit of string, Legrand sets out to find the buried loot of Captain Kidd.

A pioneer of the short story genre, Edgar Allan Poe’s stories typically captured themes of the macabre and included elements of the mysterious. His better-known stories include “The Fall of the House of Usher”, “The Pit and the Pendulum”, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, “The Masque of the Red Death” and “The Tell-Tale Heart”.

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• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Sep 2, 2014
• ISBN: 9781443441186

Edgar Allan Poe

New York Times bestselling author Dan Ariely is the James B. Duke Professor of Behavioral Economics at Duke University, with appointments at the Fuqua School of Business, the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, and the Department of Economics. He has also held a visiting professorship at MIT’s Media Lab. He has appeared on CNN and CNBC, and is a regular commentator on National Public Radio’s Marketplace. He lives in Durham, North Carolina, with his wife and two children.

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The Gold-Bug

Edgar Allan Poe

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CONTENTS

The Gold-Bug

About the Author

About the Series

Copyright

About the Publisher

The Gold-Bug

What ho! what ho! this fellow is dancing mad!

He hath been bitten by the Tarantula.

—All in the Wrong

Many years ago, I contracted an intimacy with a Mr. William Legrand. He was of an ancient Huguenot family, and had once been wealthy; but a series of misfortunes had reduced him to want. To avoid the mortification consequent upon his disasters, he left New Orleans, the city of his forefathers, and took up his residence at Sullivan’s Island, near Charleston, South Carolina.

This island is a very singular one. It consists of little else than the sea sand, and is about three miles long. Its breadth at no point exceeds a quarter of a mile. It is separated from the main land by a scarcely perceptible creek, oozing its way through a wilderness of reeds and slime, a favorite resort of the marsh hen. The vegetation, as might be supposed, is scant, or at least dwarfish. No trees of any magnitude are to be seen. Near the western extremity, where Fort Moultrie stands, and where are some miserable frame buildings, tenanted, during summer, by the fugitives from Charleston dust and fever, may be found, indeed, the bristly palmetto; but the whole island, with the exception of this western point, and a line of hard, white beach on the seacoast, is covered with a dense undergrowth of the sweet myrtle, so much prized by the horticulturists of England. The shrub here often attains the height of fifteen or twenty feet, and forms an almost impenetrable coppice, burthening the air with its fragrance.

In the inmost recesses of this coppice, not far from the eastern or more remote end of the island, Legrand had built himself a small hut, which he occupied when I first, by mere accident, made his acquaintance. This soon ripened into friendship—for there was much in the recluse to excite interest and esteem. I found him well educated, with unusual powers of mind, but infected with misanthropy, and subject to perverse moods of alternate enthusiasm and melancholy. He had with him many books, but rarely employed them. His chief amusements were gunning and fishing, or sauntering along the beach and through the myrtles, in quest of shells or entomological specimens;—his collection of the latter might have been envied by a Swammerdamm. In these excursions he was usually accompanied by an old negro, called Jupiter, who had been manumitted before the reverses of the family, but who could be induced, neither by threats nor by promises, to abandon what he considered his right of attendance upon the footsteps of his young Massa Will. It is not improbable that the relatives of Legrand, conceiving him to be somewhat unsettled in intellect, had contrived to instil this obstinacy into Jupiter, with a view to the supervision and guardianship of the wanderer.

The winters in the latitude of Sullivan’s Island are seldom very severe, and in the fall of the year it is a rare event indeed when a fire is considered necessary. About the middle of October, 18—, there occurred, however, a day of remarkable chilliness. Just before sunset I scrambled my way through the evergreens to the hut of my friend, whom I had not visited for several weeks—my residence being, at that time, in Charleston, a distance of nine miles from the Island, while the facilities of passage and re-passage were very far behind those of the present day. Upon reaching the hut I rapped, as was my custom, and getting no reply, sought for the key where I knew it was secreted, unlocked the door and went in. A fine fire was blazing upon the hearth. It was a novelty, and by no means an ungrateful one. I threw off an overcoat, took an armchair by the crackling logs, and awaited patiently the arrival of my hosts.

Soon after dark they arrived, and gave me a most cordial welcome. Jupiter, grinning from ear

Reviews for The Gold Bug

[ohernaes · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Short story. A man decodes a cryptographed message. According to Wikipedia, Poe played a role in popularizing cryptography.

[fuzzy_patters · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I thought this story was good, but I wanted more from it. The resolution didn't do enough for me. It needed more weirdness and intrigue.

[delphimo_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I usually enjoy Poe, but this short story left me feeling empty. I felt that time had been wasted on nonsense. Nelson DeMille explores the Captain Kidd lost treasure, and does a better job than Poe. Both works gush with silly formulas and codes for finding the treasure. Poe uses hoity-toity language for one character and poor slave vernacular for another character. Then the story ends abruptly.

[dukefan86 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This edition includes the stories, "The Sphinx" and "William Wilson," in addition to "The Gold Bug." Each story had an interesting ending, but I had a tough time getting into the rhythm of each one. I wonder if it's a matter of "practicing" reading Poe.

[kidzdoc_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This is a novella about an estranged man living on an island off the coast of Charleston, Souh Carolina, who discovers a mysterious golden bug with the outline of a skull on its back. He subsequently finds a map with the bug on it, which leads him to buried pirate treasure. This was a trivial story that wasn't worth the time spent reading it.

[thornton37814 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This short story explores Captain Kidd's lost treasure reputed to be on Sullivan's Island. Poe uses his interest in cryptography in his solution. Poe uses Gullah dialect for Jupiter's character which makes it difficult to read in places. This falls far short of most of Poe's work. Twenty-first century readers will view the story as racist, but the nineteenth-century audience likely would not have batted an eye at the overtones which are similar to those by other period writers. The book's font and illustrations are all brown. The scenes illustrated and map depict Sullivan's Island.