i'm doing a report and need some photos from or resembaling The Gold Bug in any way. if you have or know where to get them PLEASE help me!

-- Anonymous, October 23, 2003

Answers

It is well described in the story. The Classic Comics illustrated story and many others make the same mistake the heros and the reader at first make about the clue. The gold bug is decribed as a limbless scarab beetle, implying eternal life(Egyptian) and treasure when ironically, and as a gradual clue, it actually is shaped like a death's head that matches the tree skull which will combine to indicate the buried treasure. They get it upside down with allowances for "missing legs". The head is the separated jaw section, the markings and shape of the carapace in effect are eyes and nasal cavity.

As in the other mysteries of Poe, the reader is allowed to be more clever than the misperceptions of the protagonists and discover the clue.

-- Anonymous, October 24, 2003