Customer Reviews

The Gold Bug and Other Tales (Regents Illustrated Classics, Level B)

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First of all, I think it goes without saying that the stories collected here are wonderful. "The Cask Of Amontillado", "The Tell-Tale Heart", "The Fall Of The House Of Usher" - it doesn't get much better (or more horrifying) than this. The price is also nice. A dollar fifty? What can you buy for a dollar fifty these days?

My sole complaint regards the absence of footnotes. Take "Cask Of Amontillado", for example. It's hardly essential to know that "motley" is the garb of a jester or a clown (or that a "pipe" is a wine cask) in order to enjoy the story, but that information would have been nice to have nonetheless.

In conclusion, this collection is a wonderful bargain, but if you have a little more money you may want to invest in an annotated collection of these tales.

America was a young country; its age was measured in decades. America had few established colleges and had produced few writers, artists, and musicians. It is ironic that Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), living in poverty and suffering from alcohol and opium abuse, would be one of America's greatest writers, and one of the key creators of two genre of fiction - the deductive mystery and the horror story.

This inexpensive Dover Thrift edition - The Gold Bug and Other Tales - contains nine unabridged short stories arranged in chronological order. Two are classic mystery stories. Seven are superb horror stories.

The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841) was not only innovative, but had lasting influence on later writers. Some fifty years later Conan Doyle closely patterned Sherlock Holmes on Poe's amateur detective, Monsieur C. Auguste Dupin, and Dr. Watson on Poe's unnamed narrator that had so much difficulty keeping pace with the brilliant deductions of Dupin. Would we have had Holmes without Dupin?

The Gold-Bug (1843) is the other deductive mystery story in this Dover edition. I still remember reading it for the first time years ago. I was a young, intense entomologist at that time; after reading this intriguing tale, I carefully reinspected every beetle in my collection. I will say nothing about the plot as it is best savored as a surprise.

Six of the horror stories - The Cask Of Amontillado (1846), The Black Cat (1843), The Tell-Tale Heart (1843), The Pit and the Pendulum (1842), The Masque of the Red Death (1842), and The Fall of the House of Usher (1839) - are among Poe's best known tales. They have all been adapted to films, often with considerable license on the part of the screen writer. Ligeia (1838), the earliest story in this collection, may be unfamiliar. These tales are usually told in narrative form, sometimes from the perspective of one not entirely sane.

Many years ago a teacher, Mr. McLeod, loaned me a thick, heavy book containing the complete stories and poetry of Edgar Allan Poe. I read it cover to cover. Poe remains one of my favorite authors.

So it is hard to go wrong with any Poe books, and especially for one this cheap. These Dover Thrift editions do not have the most amazing print quality or anything, but have some great writings in cheap, easy to own packages.

Really though, if you can spare it, spent the 15 bucks or whatever and pick up one of the many complete collections of Poe if you can.

The Pit and the Pendulum is a story about a person who was punished by the Spanish Inquisition because he was a heretic. A heretic was someone who believed differently than the Catholics- who were the dominant church in Spain at the time. He was thrown into a torture pit and after some exploring, he discovered it had a well in the middle. After a while, he fell asleep due to some drug they gave him. When he awoke, he found that he was bound to a hard, wooden, torture cot. There was also a painting of father time as one would depict him on the ceiling and he was holding a moving pendulum. The pendulum was actually a blade, the man discovered, and it would very slowly shred him to pieces. When he found this out, he struggled to reach for the pendulum to end his life faster, but he could not reach it. When the pendulum was about to swing over his heart and take the first tear at his robe, rats that had been bothering him scurried p to him and started to chew up what bound him. As soon as he was free, the man inched out from under the swinging pendulum and ran to safety. But as soon as he did, he felt the walls getting very hot, and he saw that they were closing in on him. But he heard the muffled sound of human voices and he knew that the Inquisition had been defeated by its enemies. Soon, a French general named Lasalle saved him right before he fell into the well.
The theme represented in The Pit and the Pendulum is that physical torture is far less terrible than mental torture. On page 66 of The Gold Bug and Other Tales, a publication of many of Edgar Allen Poe's stories, the speaker of The Pit and the Pendulum says that, "To the victims of its tyranny, there was a choice of death with its direst physical agonies, or death with its most hideous moral horrors." Then on page 69, he says, "The pit whose horrors had been destined for so bold a recusant as myself- the pit, typical of hell, and regarded by rumor as the Ultima Thule pf all their punishments." More evidence that this is the theme is when the speaker said that mental torture added to death was "the most hideous of fates." The speaker also often wished he could get out or die a quick death.
The Pit and the Pendulum is a wonderful and exciting horror story that portrays a good theme and is based off of historical events. It should be and is classified as pure, classical literature.

This includes:

Ligeia
The Fall of the House of Usher
The Murders in the Rue Morgue
The Masque of the Red Death
The Pit and the Pendulum
The Tell-Tale Heart
The Gold-Bug
The Black Cat
The Cask of Amontillado

The usual suspects are here, and a bit of variety like The Masque of the Red Death. So, another fine collection from Dover.

Edgar Allan Poe is a master of words, wisdom and the English language in general. He sits high up with the greats of English literature and reading this book, you will know why. He is master of his words and moulds them with such love that leads the reader into thinking they are one with the author. Lead me on...