The Gold-Bug
Encyclopedia : T : TH : THE : The Gold-Bug
"The Gold-Bug" is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, set on Sullivan's Island, South Carolina. The story was first published in the Philadelphia Dollar Newspaper in June 1843 after Poe had won a competition held by the paper, receiving a prize of US$100.
"The Gold-Bug" is a story of a strange man who seemingly goes mad after finding and being bitten by a bug thought to be made of pure gold. He notifies his closest friend, the narrator, telling him to immediately come visit where he lives and then notifies the narrator upon arrival that they are embarking upon a search for lost treasure. After much doubt on behalf of the narrator, the once-seemingly insane man does find a treasure, buried by the infamous pirate "Captain Kidd," that is estimated by the narrator to be worth about fourteen million dollars. Once the treasure is safely secured, the man goes into an elaborate explanation of how he knew about the treasure's location, based on a set of occurrences that happened after the discovery of the gold bug.
The story involves cryptography with a detailed description of a method for solving a simple substitution cipher using letter frequencies. The cryptogram is:
53‡‡†305))6*;4826)4‡.)4‡);806*;48†8
¶60))85;1‡(;:‡*8†83(88)5*†;46(;88*96
*?;8)*‡(;485);5*†2:*‡(;4956*2(5*—4)8
¶8*;4069285);)6†8)4‡‡;1(‡9;48081;8:8‡
1;48†85;4)485†528806*81(‡9;48;(88;4
(‡?34;48)4‡;161;:188;‡?;
The decoded message is:
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.
External links
- ["The Gold-Bug"] from the University of Virginia Library
- [Free eBook: The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, Volume 1] at Project Gutenberg — includes "The Gold-Bug"
- ["The Gold-Bug" with annotated vocabulary] at PoeStories.com
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.