Alice's Essay

From English 194 Wiki

Understanding Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Gold-Bug”

In what ways can literary texts be analysed through means other than literary criticism? What might be discovered from subjecting literature to interpretive paradigms such as gaming, modelling, mapping, simulation and alternative methods of storytelling? Could such experiments reveal something about a text that is different to that offered by close reading and literary theory? These are some of the questions UCSB’s English 194 class has been considering, and what the class’ Gold-Bug team has explored through its web-based project on Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, “The Gold-Bug”.

Combining text and technology, the Gold-Bug team has set Poe’s classic nineteenth century story into a twentieth-first century framework and medium. It has converted the story into a hypertext in which visuals (made through Wordseye.com) and music (created in Ableton Live) play a large part and in which interaction is required of the reader. Poe’s original text has consequently been largely re-written and split up into twenty-five pages that tell the tale in a compressed and linear form. Instead of the explanation of Legrand’s actions occurring after the treasure has been found, for example, the solving of the mystery is witnessed alongside the characters’ search for the treasure. Consequently, the treasure is found at the end of the hypertext, leaving the reader with a sense of both climax and achievement that is different to that of the original text. The project, in its early prototype form, consists of two parts made in two different web-making programmes: Dreamweaver, a fairly basic programme in which the team was able to construct the main body of the project; and Flash, a more expert programme allowing for advanced visual and technical effects such as animation. Had there been more time, the team would ideally have wanted to make the whole project in Flash. Instead, only an introduction and the first couple of pages of the hypertext were made, but this was sufficient to provide a sense of how the project could have looked and to allow the team to explore the themes in that technological space as well as in Dreamweaver. The technical dimension of the project was also not the most important aspect of the process. The principle aim of the project was really to explore what might be discovered and subsequently understood of “The Gold-Bug” through subjecting it to these different methods of analysis and, in the Gold-Bug team’s case, to the juxtaposition of the two time frames and the adaptation of the original text to fit its new context. In this essay, then, I will discuss the how the project has affected my understanding of Poe’s tale.

The hypertext form immediately required the team to significantly change Poe’s text. On looking at other hypertexts on the internet, the team’s members sensed the need for the project to be succinct, dynamic and engaging. In the context of the internet, one expects not only visual interest and quick pacing, but also convenience. If a reader wants to read the original, full text of “The Gold-Bug”, s/he may as well pick up a book; the team’s project had to offer more than this, had to justify using the internet in the presentation of the story, and therefore had to immediately start considering the expectations and needs of its potential readers. The methods of analysing the text therefore had to suit the project’s technological context. For example, because the story had to be shortened and intensified, the fundamental and primary aspects of the tale had to be identified - its progression, the conveyance of its major themes, the creation of its atmosphere, mystery, suspense and characterisations. These then had to be keenly assessed in terms of how they could be effectively rendered within the technological space and how the reader is to become actively engaged in them.

Literary analysis, however, was not exempt from this process; close reading and secondary research were done and themes, motifs, characterisation, imagery and tone, were all keenly analysed. However, the mould of the project required that the analysis be more focussed than usual and that some aspects of the tale be prioritised over others. Consequently, this process has informed my understanding of “The Gold-Bug”, highlighting for me a few main features of the text with which the group primarily worked. The tension between rationality and irrationality, logic and superstition, for example, constitutes one of these themes. Creating uncertainty, suspense, and an eager desire to learn Legrand’s secret once the treasure has been found, the theme contributes greatly to the progression and intrigue of “The Gold-Bug”. This comes partly from the fact that the dichotomy assumed between rationality and irrationality is deconstructed by the time the tale ends. Although Legrand seems to be mad when consumed in his project, for example, his process of solving the puzzle is in fact very rational: Whilst the narrator believes “that [Legrand] had been infected with some of the innumerable Southern superstitions about money buried” (115), Legrand explains that, "At this stage of my reflections I endeavored to remember, and did remember, with entire distinctness, every incident which occurred about the period in question” (127). Moreover, within Legrand’s calculations themselves, coincidences and irrational explanations prove to be both prominent and necessary. “These were so very extraordinary”, he says, “Do you observe how mere an accident it was that these events should have occurred upon the sole day of all the year in which it has been, or may be sufficiently cool for fire, and that without the fire…I should never have become aware of the death's-head, and so never the possessor of the treasure?" (129). It should be noted, too, that the very possibility of there being any treasure at all rests upon a legend, an unverifiable story: “of course everyone has heard…about money buried, somewhere upon the Atlantic coast, by Kidd and his associates”, the Gold-Bud team’s hypertext says. And of course, the reader quite probably hasn’t heard of the story, thus increasing its suspense and leaving the sanity–insanity question unanswered.

The multiple narrative perspectives in the tale is another aspect that the team, in considering how to re-tell Poe’s story, came to consider as fundamental to the story. As already implied, this aspect realises much of the story’s uncertainty and suspense as it unfolds the events from three angles. In fact I think it is fair to say that without Jupiter’s superstitious beliefs and the narrator’s scepticism, the story would be a much blander affair lacking in mystery and much hint of Gothicism. For the characterisations of the figures are fundamental to the story and its themes: Legrand, as the “master ratiocinator” is required for the mystery to be recognised and solved, and to embody the rational side of the story; Jupiter represents the influence of Southern superstitions on the tale and consequently the need for chance and coincidence to exist for the treasure to be found; and the narrator, lastly, provides the reader with a perspective s/he can identify with. “ Upon the whole,” he says”, “I was sadly vexed and puzzled, but, at length, I concluded to make a virtue of necessity -- to dig with a good will, and thus the sooner to convince the visionary, by ocular demonstration, of the fallacy of the opinions he entertained (115)”. Both distinct from Legrand’s genius and Jupiter’s tendency towards superstition, the narrator provides a balanced, if somewhat sceptical view from which the reader can follow the progress of the plot. This quotation, for example, may well also convey the reader’s feelings at that point in the story, uncertain of what kind of tale s/he is exactly reading but happy to continue with it on order to find out. Indeed the reader him/herself constitutes another perspective, a fourth view that combines and contributes to those of Poe’s three characters in order to fully realise the potential of the tale. Thus this multiplicity is a fundamental and highly effective aspect of it and therefore something that the Gold-Bug team focussed upon and recreated as accurately as possible within its project.

Creating the project also encouraged the team to do some secondary reading on the text used. Consequently, I began to consider Poe’s theory of the short story in regards to both the original text of “The Gold-Bug” and the project. In this theory, Poe emphasises the totality and unity required of a short story in order for it to be fully successful. In short, the artist, as a God-like figure, should carefully arrange all the parts of the story such that none are superfluous; “there should be no word written”, Poe says in Eureka, “of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the one pre-established design” . Thus each part of the story should be interconnected, and the reader should be able to experience this unity whilst reading the tale. For this to be the case, however, Poe believed that a short story should be read in one sitting. If this is not so, he believed that “the affairs of the world” interfere with the world of the text which then ruins its totality and therefore its value as a piece of artwork.

Before creating the project, I considered in my Research Report the possibility of realising Poe’s ideals within the work. For this to succeed, not only would the project have to be unified and interconnected, but the reader, too, would need to become fully engaged in the website. This therefore proposed some goals and issues for the Gold-Bug team to consider: it had to assess the extent to which “The Gold-Bug” was itself an example of Poe’s theory; to identify which were the most important aspects of the tale in this regard; and to consider how they could be demonstrated within the project. The linearity of the hypertext became one way in which the team approached this. Re-writing the story in this way encouraged the team members to emphasise the tale’s unifying parts. For example, aspects such as the search for the treasure and Legrand’s explanation were aligned, the contribution of the different perspectives of the events to each part of the story was considered, and the setting of the tale alongside Poe’s use of the legend of Captain Kidd was portrayed. Thus the process of making the project highlighted how each aspect of Poe’s story contributes to its overall design and drove the group to consider how to clearly demonstrate this to its readers. One example of such thought in the hypertext is the placing of Legrand’s enthusiasm for his discovery of the bug alongside Jupiter’s suspicions of it. The effect of this is to plainly and succinctly portray the different perspectives of the tale: “You are elated at your discovery”, the narrator of the hypertext says to the reader, “You believe this scarabaeus to be of a totally new species.” Whilst on the same page, Jupiter quotes from Poe’s original text, “I didn't like de look ob de bug mouff, myself, nohow, so I wouldn't take hold ob him wid my finger, but I cotch him wid a piece ob paper dat I found (102-3).

Thus the creation of the project pushed the Gold-Bug team to clearly identify such patterns within Poe’s unified text. Another example of this is the importance of puzzle-solving in the story, its necessity both for the finding of the treasure and for rationality to be explored. A significant aspect of the tale, then, this theme also tied in with the interpretive paradigm of gaming that the English 194 class had discussed. Looking at Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman’s Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals, the class had looked at some of the gaming theories they propose. Most significantly in this respect, Salen and Zimmerman identify what they name the “magic circle”, created when players enter into the zone of the game. “In some way separate from the real world” (94), this circle demarcates an assumption of rules, goals and meanings that are unique to the space of that game. This theory proved influential to my understanding of “The Gold-Bug” in a couple of ways. Firstly, the magic circle can be thought of as comparable to the autonomy of Poe’s text; the idea that the reader should fully inhabit its world and remain disconnected from the outside world whilst reading the story places the characters within and readers of the tale in the position of the gamer. Respectively, one could then identify the goal of Legrand’s task as akin to that within a game. Once discovering what the parchment contains and how he may reveal it, Legrand must solve the cryptogram and then the riddle in order to reach the treasure. To achieve this, a set of rules must be adhered to – the rules of the cryptogram and the rational deducing, followed by the practical trying-out of the enigma. Further, as is obvious from Jupiter and the narrator’s objective perspectives of Legrand, his focus on the task is complete and isolated from the outside world. Indeed it because of this very point, because the other characters initially have no idea what he is doing, that Legrand is considered mad by them and by the reader: "Keeps a syphon wid de figgurs on de slate -- de queerest figgurs I ebber did see,” Jupiter says, “Ise gittin' to be skeered, I tell you. Hab for to keep mighty tight eye 'pon him 'noovers” (102).

This analysis of Legrand’s actions and its placement within Salen and Zimmerman’s framework is a perfect example of how the Gold-Bug team was encouraged to think about Poe’s story in an alternative way whilst constructing the project. Its members may not have identified the game-like nature of Legrand’s steps to find the treasure had gaming theory not been studied by the 194 class as a method of analysing literature. Thus through making “The Gold-Bug” project, the group has been able to draw out a less manifest concept of Poe’s tale and illuminate it for the benefit of the project’s readers. This also becomes apparent with the user interaction of the project. Although a game is not played as such, a sense of playing the text is created as the reader must work his/her way through the story. This is highlighted, in fact, in the Flash version of the project. With its greater range of effects, the user of the programme can interact more with the story. S/he could click different areas of the screen to talk to Jupiter or the narrator, or to reveal a skull underneath what looks like the gold-bug. Not only does this increase the game-playing factor, then, but further emphasises the themes of the story that the team worked with: being able to choose to talk to one of other characters makes the different viewpoints within the story more clear, and the gold-bug’s transforming into the skull begins to communicate Legrand’s possible madness early on in the project. In the Dreamweaver-based project, however, puzzle-solving is still an evident part. The forward movement and linear timeframe emphasise that there is a goal to be reached, and the steady revelation of the cryptogram allows for the reader to follow Legrand in his puzzle-solving and to try and work it out for his-/herself.

The process of making the project was therefore very valuable in terms of deepening my understanding of “The Gold-Bug”. Re-writing the text and thinking about how it could be communicated in a technological space which included visual and audio media as well as text, forced me to effectively analyse and understand the different parts of Poe’s story and what he communicates through it. This opened up the imaginative space of the text and, whilst encouraging the team to consider it in a way other than literary interpretation, consequently highlighted details that may not otherwise have been so acutely recognised. For example, the group paid close attention to the descriptions of the landscape when the pictures were rendered and to the tale’s gothic atmosphere when both the visuals and music were considered. And even more importantly, the project drove me and the rest of the team to ask questions about the nature of the text when conveyed in a different way and through a different, modern medium. What happens to a text when it is re-written, simplified or rearranged, for example? How can this reach a reader in a different yet effective way? How could a technological context benefit the story and further, a twenty-first century reader? Or how might the adaptation of the text communicate successfully to a Middle or High School student? Such questions formed one of the most valuable aspects of the creative process. Although detail may have been lost through the re-working of the story, benefits are drawn from the simplification of the storyline, from the clarity of the themes and from the modernisation of the conveyance of the tale: The story may now be considered more accessible to younger readers; it is more suited to the digital age where convenience and visual and audio effects are expected; it has become more attractive to those who may not want to spend the time reading the whole text; and it has expanded the imaginative framework of Poe’s work into visual and audio media. Through its moulding of Poe’s text, the Gold-Bug team’s project in some ways offers an interpretation of it, but more importantly it offers an accessible entrance into the story, its themes and imaginative qualities, as discussed. It places the tale within a contemporary framework and consequently opens it up to a wider audience that might respond more keenly to the hypertext than to the original text. The possibility of doing this is something that I certainly learnt throughout the creative process and something that steadily influenced my understanding of Poe’s classic story.

Bibliography

· Beebe, Maurice, “The Universe of Roderick Usher”, Robert Regan Ed, Poe: A Collection of Critical Essays, (Englewood Cliffs, N. J: Prentice-Hall Inc, [1967])

· Hoffman, Daniel, Poe, Poe, Poe, Poe, Poe, Poe, Poe, (London: Robson Brooks Limited, 1973)

· Poe, Edgar Allan, The Gold Bug. 10th June 2007. http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=PoeGold.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=1&division=div1

· Poe, Edgar Allan, “The Philosophy of Composition”, Nina Baym ed., The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Sixth Edition, Volume B, American Literature 1820 – 1865, (New York and London: W. W. Norton and Company, 2003)

· Salen and Zimmerman, Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals, (MIT Press, 2004)