_Characters_. Poe's strength did not lie in the creation of character.
He is so intent on the development of the windings and unwindings of his
story that the characters become mere puppets, originated and controlled
by the needs of the plot. Jupiter deserves mention as one of the
earliest attempts made by an American short-story writer to portray
negro character. But Jupiter has been so far surpassed in breadth and
reality by Joel Chandler Harris, Thomas Nelson Page, and a score of
others as to be almost negligible in the count. 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.