The Gold Bug Sparknotes

The Gold Bug Essay The Gold Bug starts with the Narrator going to Sullivan’s Island to visit his friend, William Legrand (Poe 226). Once he arrives, Legrand tells him about a golden scarabaeus, but cannot show him since he left it with a lieutenant, and Legrand decides to draw the bug (Poe 227).
The drawing of the beetle is the inciting moment of the story, where the conflict begins. The Narrator sees a skull on the parchment, not the beetle that Legrand supposedly drew (Poe 228). They had an argument about the picture and the lack of antennae (Poe 228). Legrand analyses the parchment for a while and he crumpled up the parchment that the drawing was on (Poecan 229). He was about to throw it into the fire, but he stops himself. He folds the parchment and puts it in his wallet inside his desk (Poe 229).
Legrand was the one who found the beetle. He found a parchment by an old boat, and wrapped the bug in it (Poe 242). He kept the parchment even after he gave the bug to the lieutenant (Poe 242). He drew the picture of the bug for the narrator on this parchment, thinking it as scrap paper (Poe 242) . The Narrator sat by the fire, and the heat

Since there was a skull and a goat on the parchment, Legrand concluded that it was a pun on Captain Kidd, the pirate (Poe 244). This pun could only make sense in English, so he decrypted the message in English (Poe 246). What started as a mess of jumbled characters became legible sentences and instructions (Poe 245-248). Once that was done, he had to understand what the message meant. He knew the “Good Glass” was a telescope, as that was the only thing sea folk referred to when they said “glass” (Poe 249). He also had to find out what “Bishop’s Hostel” meant, and ended up with “Bessop’s Castle (Poe 248). Then he had to look through the telescope at the “Devil’s Seat”, which was just a ledge on a rock, to see a skull (Poe 249). After all this problem solving, he was ready to go find the