Visitor Ratings: In defense of Jupiter's barbarous lingo, which has been often criticized, it should be remembered that Poe intended him as a representative of the Gullah (or Gulla) dialect. "It is the negro dialect," says Joel Chandler Harris, "in its most primitive state-the 'Gullah' talk of some of the negroes on the Sea Islands being merely a confused and untranslatable mixture of English and African words."
William Legrand, though not a great or notable character in any way, is admirably fitted to do what is required of him in the story. Like Poe, he was solitary, proud, quick-tempered, and "subject to perverse moods of alternate enthusiasm and melancholy." He had also Poe's passion for puzzles. Jupiter is hardly more than an awkward tool fashioned to display Legrand's analytic and directive genius; and the other character in the story, like Dr. Watson in Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, is introduced merely to ask such questions as must be answered if the reader is to follow intelligently the unfolding of the plot. They are agents rather than characters.
What ho! what ho! this fellow is dancing mad!
He hath been bitten by the Tarantula.
"All in the Wrong"
Many years ago, I contracted an intimacy with a Mr. William Legrand. He was of an ancient Huguenot family, and had once been wealthy; but a series of misfortunes had reduced him to want. To avoid the mortification consequent upon his disasters, he left New Orleans, the city of his forefathers, and took up his residence at Sullivan's Island, near Charleston, South Carolina.
This island is a very singular one. It consists of little else than the sea sand, and is about three miles long. Its breadth at no point exceeds a quarter of a mile. It is separated from the mainland by a scarcely perceptible creek, oozing its way through a wilderness of reeds and slime, a favorite resort of the marsh-hen. The vegetation, as might be supposed, is scant, or at least dwarfish. No trees of any magnitude are to be seen. Near the western extremity, where Fort Moultrie stands, and where are some miserable frame buildings, tenanted during summer by the fugitives from Charleston dust and fever, may be found, indeed, the bristly palmetto; but the whole island, with the exception of this western point, and a line of hard white beach on the seacoast, is covered with a dense undergrowth of the sweet myrtle, so much prized by the horticulturists of England. The shrub here often attains the height of fifteen or twenty feet, and forms an almost impenetrable coppice, burdening the air with its fragrance.
