Hayley's Essay

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An Interpretation of Poe’s “The Gold-Bug”

The Goldbug Team project of the English 194 course at the University of California Santa Barbara interpreted the short story “The Gold-Bug” by Edgar Allan Poe by utilizing an alternative paradigm of literary interpretation that includes such devices as graphing, mapping, gaming, or modeling. As a result, the project explored “The Gold-Bug” text using new methods and mediums to create an understanding and re-telling of Poe’s work. The focus of the course was to research ways to utilize new paradigms of literature to analyze and understand textual works, and thus the Goldbug team took the paradigm of hypertext, of the electronic narrative, and applied it to the well-known work of Edgar Allan Poe. By analyzing the original text and Poe’s main concepts, one can understood how the Goldbug team transgressed certain elements of the original text to create their new interpretation of the “The Gold-Bug” narrative.

The paradigms of literature explored in English 194, as well as by the Goldbug team in their class project, introduce new and contemporary ways to view and read literature. In the case of Edgar Allan Poe, certain concepts and themes were highlighted by use of the hypertext. Also, the reader has the opportunity to approach the text from a different perspective by being able to interact with the text and its themes and action. What is significant about the Gold team’s project is that texts such as Edgar Allan Poe’s that were written in the 19th century can be analyzed and interpreted using 21st century methods and paradigms such as virtual modeling, gaming, and digital media. The use of such paradigms allows the classic narratives to transcend their contextual time to be reinterpreted via a modern method of understanding representation. Besides just reading words written on a page one hundred years ago, the reader becomes actually engaged in the story allowing him or her to experience the work with a new, more contemporary perspective of understanding. Thus, this essay will address the text itself as written by Poe, major concepts and themes that the Gold Bug Team wanted to address, the concepts of the project as they related to the work, and the process of creating and producing the Gold Bug team Project.

Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Gold-Bug” was written for a literary competition held by Philadelphia’s Dollar Newspaper in 1834 (course website). “The Gold-Bug” is a mystery narrative, the genre Poe is famous for developing. The tale follows the main character, William Legrand, on a treasure hunt for the treasure of the infamous pirate Captain Kidd. The text is quite detailed in its description of the treasure’s whereabouts and in its description of how Legrand pieces together the clues. One important detail is that of a cipher, as Poe was a great fan of cryptography, which aides Legrand in locating the treasure. As in most of Poe’s other work, “The Gold-Bug” possesses gothic undertones and an overall mood of despondence and suspense. These well-known aspects of Poe’s fiction tie into his theory of short story writing and therefore were a significant reason why the Goldbug team selected this work by Poe for its project.

The most basic principle of Poe’s writing was that he thought the writer should create a single and total psychological or spiritual effect upon the reader; hence, his themes always prioritized the creation of an intense mood or feeling be it horror, suspense, or melancholy. Poe does not include extra elements in his writing: no subplots or minor characters. Ultimately, Poe believed his role as a writer to be a moral task that worked by stimulating the reader’s mental, emotional, and spiritual senses. The Goldbug team thus paid attention to elements such as the mood of the piece and the focus on the mental and spiritual effect on the reader in “The Gold-Bug” when using new media resources and when applying and interpreting the text to the team project. As it was Poe’s goal to create a psychological experience for his reader, the Goldbug team therefore sought to give a similar experience to the reader by using methods of interaction and visual components that could animate the “mood” or gothic feel that Poe was so well known for.

Poe’s theory of fiction is exemplified in his work “The Gold-Bug”, but the text includes other interesting aspects that appealed to the Goldbug team’s concept for its project. One theme from the text that the Goldbug team wanted to interpret was the concept of reality versus insanity. Throughout the text, Legrand is constantly torn by the dilemma of madness versus logic. When Legrand solves the clues to the treasure, he seems to use logic and reasoning, but the more he uncovers and interprets from the clues, the more insane the quest seems to become. Other characters, such as the narrator and Legrand’s slave Jupiter, repeatedly express their concern for Legrand’s madness over the bug and his obsession over finding the treasure. For example, after observing Legrand with the scarabaeus, the narrator says of Legrand, “ . . . I observed the last, plain evidence of my friend’s aberration of mind…” (9). The paradox of what is logical and what is insane works to develop the mystery motif of the text as well as provide the Goldbug team an interesting concept for interpretation. Within this theme, the Goldbug team saw the potential to engage the reader in a similar psychological situation.

Another theme of the text that the Goldbug team wished to evaluate was the idea of decision versus chance. In “The Gold-Bug,” Poe plays with the notion of events occurring as a result of the characters' decisions, by their own deliberating, versus events occurring by total coincidence. Thus, the idea of action being controlled by chance adds to the supernatural or gothic mood of the piece, or to the feel that some other force is moving along the actions of the plot. For example, several of the clues found in the process of discovering the treasure teeter between the two possibilities of decision or chance. Legrand’s finding the bug seems to be by chance, as his discovery of the skull image in his sketch of the bug is completely accidental, but much of Legrand’s reasoning and solving of the mystery is by his own contrived actions. Also, one last major aspect of Poe’s text is the cipher, which again connects to Poe’s interest in cryptography. This coded writing must be solved, just like the mystery in the book, and is a main tool in Legrand’s solving of the treasure’s location. The Goldbug team found this aspect of Poe’s short story especially relevant to its interpretation as Poe’s theory of writing aims to provide a psychological or mental effect on the reader, and the cipher itself is in fact a mental puzzle. Cryptography is a kind of mind game or decoding challenge; thus, the Goldbug team used this aspect of Poe’s text in their project to illustrate Poe’s interest in decoding and in mind games. What all three of these main components of “The Gold-Bug” share is they all encompass Poe’s aim to mentally or psychologically engage the reader by creating a single and total mental experience. All three concepts challenge the reader mentally, stimulating the psychological senses of the reader as he interprets the plot.

One last major element of Poe’s work in the “The Gold-Bug” is Poe’s construction of a specific mood or atmospheric effect. This aspect of Poe’s writing provided the Goldbug team with an opportunity to interpret such elements that are usually gothic or supernatural, by engaging the reader’s visual and audio senses. Thus, by reinterpreting Poe’s gothic mood in his fiction through mediums such as images and sound, the Goldbug team hoped to provide the reader with an atmospheric understanding as well as a textual one, much like the virtual game Myst. Thus, these aspects of “The Gold-Bug” were main points the Goldbug team wanted to interpret using the paradigm of hypertext.

The main concept of the Goldbug team’s class project on Poe’s “The Gold-Bug” was, as mentioned previously, to interpret the text using new paradigms such as modeling, gaming, or in the case of the Goldbug team, the electronic narrative/ hypertext. A “Hypertext narrative” as defined by Porter Abbott has the electronic capability of breaking up the text and including picture, graphics, and sound as well as uses the linking function to allow readers to link to other virtual spaces (28). These links can include pictures, footnote information, and music; the reader has the choice of whether or not he chooses to find link in a certain passage. Therefore, the hypertext can create an individual experience of the narrative for each reader. Hypertext offers a new twist on an old narrative form, permitting readers to rearrange the narrative dialogue and to distribute it differently in different readings (30). Although the Goldbug Team utilized the main idea behind hypertext in the team’s combination of images, sound, and text, the team did not choose to link or disrupt the linear structure of the telling of the story. However, the Goldbug Team did give the reader the option of arranging certain information as he chooses, thus offering the possibility of a different reading each time without disturbing the main plot of the text. The reader has the opportunity to explore the text, to talk to different character or uncover certain clues.

This idea is most accomplished in the Goldbug team’s Flash version of the project where the reader is guided through the plot but at each scene has the ability to move around the scene, talking to different characters, clicking on objects to undercover clues or elements of the treasure hunt, all building up to the conclusion of the original text. As the virtual Flash program is effective in its use of animation and visual elements, it is time consuming, and thus for this particular course, the Goldbug team also produced another, simpler version with the same concept but in Dreamweaver. This version is strictly linear but still moves the reader through the plot with images, and selected excepts from the text that guide as well as interpret the main elements of Poe’s fiction writing, as discussed earlier. The Dreamweaver version could be said to be the prototype of the Flash version of the project, the version that would have been developed more if the Goldbug Team had more time. The Dreamweaver version of the project utilized another virtual program, WordsEye, to create the images coupled with excerpts from the text. The entire project was posted online, thus recreating the story of “The Gold-Bug” in the modern digital medium within the new virtual space of the Internet.

Both versions of the Goldbug Team’s main project were hypertext based and thus interpreted main elements of Poe’s writing in that new paradigm. The concept of logic and reality battling insanity and irrationality is interpreted through the hypertext paradigm in both the Flash and Dreamweaver version of the project. Ultimately, the Flash version would have included buttons and excerpts from the text that would either question or confuse the reader, perhaps sending him or her back to a place they had already been or displaying a quote from the narrator as he voiced his concern for Legrand’s insanity. In the Dreamweaver version, the reader navigates through the narrative as an unknown character, neither as Legrand or the narrator. Thus, as the reader moves through the text, phrases appear that question the action or events that are unfolding with phrases like, “You must be mad!” or “This must be insane”. These textual excerpts are meant to accomplish a similar effect of Poe’s fiction in creating a mental dilemma for the reader of what is logical and what is madness. The concept of decision versus chance is also conveyed in the Goldbug team’s project. In the Flash version, the reader is able to choose certain buttons and animation, thus taking control over the action of the plot. However, some buttons are hidden and might be found by chance, and as the hypertext follows the plot of the original narrative, Legrand encounters the same coincidences and chance discoveries. In the Dreamweaver version, this theme is conveyed through selected text excerpts. The component of the cipher in Poe’s narrative ultimately would have been included in the Flash version and thus would have ideally solved itself as the reader moved through the plot, completing the puzzle. In the Dreamweaver version, the cipher is included as part of an excerpt from the original text and is used to guide the reader along in exploring the plot of the narrative.

In keeping with Poe’s desire to create an intense mood or feeling of horror or melancholy and hence heighten reader’s mental and spiritual senses, the Goldbug team included an old house, fog, images of skulls, and other dark objects. Thus, the Goldbug team sought to transcend such a mood, as in the original “The Gold-Bug” text, of suspense and gothic eeriness through visual and audio components. Gothic imagery, such as the death head-skull image from the bug, can be translated into actual pictures and images of such objects. Also, imagery (like the gold-bug) and specific texts were animated in Flash; a bug crawling across the page, words fading in and out were all ways to convey the mood of the text. In the Dreamweaver version of the Goldbug team project, the virtual program of WordsEye requires the user to construct the image by typing out the scene word by word. Thus, members of the Goldbug Team included adjectives like foggy or stormy into their WordsEye scene script. Also, the process of WordsEye itself played into the cipher motif of “The Gold-Bug” as WordsEye is not a direct word to image translation. Instead, the user must find what words work best by using a trial and error method. Thus Goldbug team members used a decoding process to achieve the image desired for the scene, just as decoding of the cipher was necessary in the “The Gold-Bug” to solve the mystery. Also, one Goldbug member created audio tracks to accompany the reader through the text. The tracks were specifically created to sound eerie or suspenseful in order to translate the feeling of Poe’s “The Gold-Bug”. By recreating the gothic feel of Poe’s fiction through digital imagery and sound, the Goldbug team was able to gain a better understanding of these specific elements of Poe’s writing.

One last aspect of Poe’s “The Gold-Bug” that the Goldbug team’s class project interpreted was the perspectives of the different characters. In the text, the narrator and Legrand's slave, Jupiter, accompany Legrand on his treasure hunt. Thus their dialogue provides much of the plot as well as illustrates Poe’s theories of writing. In the Goldbug team project, the reader is a fourth party, an observer. Quotes from Legrand, Jupiter, and the narrator help to guide the reader through the project and plot of “The Gold-Bug” while also supplying clues or displaying a component of Poe’s writing as discussed earlier. For example, as the different characters question the action in the plot, what the reader is doing or seeing helps to construct the concept of logic versus insanity. Excerpts from the text in the Goldbug team project help to navigate the reader. In the case of the Flash version, such phrases are animated, using timing and movement to accentuate the action being described in the words.

Overall, the Goldbug team final project aimed to interpret the Edgar Allan Poe short story “The Gold-Bug” by incorporating certain elements of the Poe’s writing as well as certain themes from the text. By using a new paradigm of interpretation, the hypertext, the Goldbug team created a new method of understanding and thus analysis of the piece a fiction. The use of virtual programs transcended several main themes from Poe’s original text as well as important plot elements in the new genre of hypertext. As with any medium, there are limitations to using digital means of interpreting a narrative. While creating the final project the Goldbug team discovered that limitations in technical abilities and knowledge, as well as limitations in the virtual programs themselves, prevented an ideal execution of the final project. Also, translating text into visual images or sound always takes the risk of losing elements from the original text, but since the Goldbug team chose to follow the original plot and not link out of the hypertext, this problem was a minor concern. In general, the transition from text to digital is an interesting and important aspect to the study of literature in the modern age. By creating The Gold-Bug Project, the Goldbug team did in fact gain a new understanding of the Edgar Allan Poe text in the new paradigm of the hypertext.

Sources cited

Abbot, H. Porter. The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative. p. 1-35. Cambridge University Press, 2002.

Poe, Edgar Allan. The Gold Bug. 1843. June. http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccernew2?id=PoeGold.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/ parsed&tag=public&part=1&division=div1

English 194 Course Website. Professor Alan Liu. University of California Santa Barbara. Spring, 2007. <http://liu.english.ucsb.edu/wiki2/index.php/Goldbug_Team>