Essay On The Pit And The Pendulum

Have you ever been so close to death you thought you were dead… or wished you were? The story, The Pit and the Pendulum, by Edgar Allan Poe, is about a Frenchman who was visiting Spain and was caught up in the Spanish Inquisition in 1806. He was captured by the church-men who ruled the terrifying land he had ventured to. “They arrested, accused, and tried me… all on the charge that I did not worship God as they did. And for that I was going to die.” The Frenchman was tortured, not only physically but mentally as well, and found himself at death’s door throughout the story.

The unit question asks whether or not the hero of Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Pit and the Pendulum” would realistically be able to escape the descending blade swinging on a pendulum. The question is a matter of time, is it feasible for the protagonist to escape the pendulum with the allotted amount of time. Based on standard deviation and testing a pendulum of the same scale as the one mentioned in the story, the answer is no. The protagonist mentions that he believed 10-12 periods of the pendulum would result in the blade coming in contact with his torso. Using the formula developed in class for the period of a pendulum, it would take the 30 foot pendulum described in the story about 72 seconds to complete 12 periods. Testing the actual 30 foot yielded similar results within 1-2 seconds of 72 seconds. Therefore, it is fair to say that the hero is working with 72 seconds to free himself. This does not seem like enough time to develop an escape strategy, act on the strategy, and leave without getting hit bit the pendulum. The method the hero describes involves thinking about the situation and then employing the help of nearby rats. He also mentions, “Yet one minute, and I felt that the struggle would be over,” as if to imply he had 1 minute to spare. Since he was reflecting and then enticing the rats to gnaw through the rope it is not likely that it took only 12 seconds to escape. 72 seconds does not seem like enough time for the hero to complete his escape. However, the thickness of the rope and speed of the rats are factors that could affect the outcome.

The theme in “The Pit and the Pendulum” is death and hope. This is displayed in the poem when the narrator realizes the razor sharp pendulum that has been over him swaying from side to side is not an image, and is getting ready to kill him at any second. In the “Pit and the Pendulum” on page 276 it states, “It was the painted figure of Time as he is commonly represented, save that, in lieu of a scythe, he held what, at a casual glance, I supposed to be the pictured image of a huge pendulum, such as we see on antique clocks.” This means the whole time the narrator was in the dungeon he thought the pendulum was nothing but an image of time. When the rats bite through his restraints, he has a feeling of hope that he will escape and not die He feels the same thing

It is a well known fact that Edgar Allan Poe‘s stories are famous for producing horror or terror in his readers beyond description. However, it is one of this essay’s attempts to precisely describe these two characteristics present in The pit and the pendulum and The black cat. Horror may be defined as “the feeling of revulsion that usually occurs after something frightening is seen, heard, or otherwise experienced. It is the feeling one gets after coming to an awful realization or experiencing a deeply unpleasant occurrence.” On the contrary terror is described as “the feeling of dread and anticipation that precedes the horrifying experience” These two concepts are thought to be crucial when analyzing Poe’s writings. It is going to be

What do The Cask of Amontillado and The Pit and the Pendulum have in common. The Cask of Amontillado’s theme is that one man hates the other and will do anything to kill him. This leads into him bringing his enemy into a cave and chaining the enemy to the wall and making it impossible for the enemy to escape by building a wall. The Pit and the Pendulum talks of a man that is sentenced to a prison in Toledo and doesn’t believe in until he is in it. I am going to show The Cask of Amontillado’s and The Pit and the Pendulum’s similarities and differences.

feel isolated and afraid. Moreover, the narrator of “The Pit and the Pendulum” also experiences

In this story, Edgar Allan Poe (such as in many of his works) uses the setting to create a dark image inside our minds. He makes this specially through darkness, therefore the character makes a connection with death. “The physical setting oppresses him in the visions of his graveyard” (1).

Edgar Allen Poe is an early 19th century writer and poet that is mostly known for his alluring short stories and poems. Poe’s works of literature are usually extremely dark and gothic. Poe’s arguably most famous poem, “The Raven,” displays a supernatural experience between a man and a talking raven that flew into his house in the middle of the night. Another one of Poe’s popular piece of work, “The Pit and the Pendulum,” tells the story of a man who has just been placed in a prison designed for torture. In Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” and “Pit and the Pendulum,” Poe creates suspense for the reader through the use of an unreliable narrator, his perplexing tone, and his use of gothic imagery.

For the sake of the “unity of effect”, Poe uses setting for the purpose of conceiving a sinister mood. As Montresor and Fortunato walked deeper into the catacombs in the Cask of Amontillado, Montresor points out the trickling of the water on the bones. “We are below the river’s bed. The drops of moisture trickle among the bones.” (Cask)The setting is under the surface of the earth, so the audience associates it with with Hell because of the bones that lie around. The bones also make the audience feel that the setting is eery and dangerous because it reminds them of death. This only makes isolation and danger prominent factors in the setting. The mood becomes unpredictable and treacherous, with a sense of fear and dread knowing that something bad will happen to the characters who are away from safety. Under those circumstances, Poe controlled the audience's fear and the diabolical mood using the dark setting.

After evaluating the work of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher, he utilizes with imagery to build up the feeling of terror. First of all, the passage is about an ill man, Roderick Usher, who invites his old friend of his to come meet him. In this passage both him and his sister, Madeline Usher, are the last remaining of the Usher race and is diagnosed with an unnatural illness. The narrator begins to feel terror with the supernatural things going on in the house of Usher and the illness of the Ushers. Although the narrator feels the sense of terror from the moment he entered the house, through the use of imagery, Poe is able to bring emotion to the reader. Throughout the passage, the author continues to build up the sense of terror by asserting the image and setting of both the passage and the atmosphere. For instance, he starts the passage by stating “a dull, dark, and a soundless day...clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens” (Poe 194). In relation to the previous quote, the quote illustrates the image of the atmosphere and the setting of the story. In particular, because Poe expresses the sense of terror by describing the atmosphere as dark, quiet, and gloomy, the reader can get an image of the surroundings and get the feeling of the darkness and horror. In addition, according to Poe, during the first glimpse of the house of Usher, the narrator describes it as gloomy and unpleasant. In particular, Poe states “the shades of the evening drew on… a sense of insufferable gloom” (Poe 194). Additionally, the description of the house adds on to the sense of terror that Poe established in the beginning of the story. Based on the past two quotes stated by the author, the reader can begin to picture a dark and dull day with a gloomy house adding on to the darkness. Lastly, in regards to Edgar Allan Poe, the house of Usher is

“The Pit and the Pendulum” is a horror fictional short story written by Edgar Allan Poe in which it tells about a man that is sentenced to death during the Spanish Inquisition. The narrator talks about the experiences he has throughout his imprisonment. He talks about the rumours surrounding the prison he is in, where he must serve his sentence until it is time for his execution. As he is looking around his cell he discovers a pit and he recalls different methods of torture that were used during the Inquisition. The narrator is later drugged and when he awakens he finds himself tied to a wooden slab and finds he can only move his arms.

In Edgar Allan Poe’s story, “The Pit and the Pendulum,” Poe, uses the horror elements of Isolation, madness, and anxiety/distortion to add suspense to the story. Poe uses those elements and creates a very suspenseful story. He writes about how he is all alone in a dark dungeon where he can't see anything. The first one he uses is isolation as used in this here. “The thought came gently and stealthily, and it seemed long before it attained full appreciation but just as my spirit came at length properly to feel and entertain it, the figures of the judges vanished, as if magically, from before me; the tall candles sank into nothingness; their flames went out utterly; the blackness of darkness supervened; all sensations appeared swallowed up

Stephen King once said, “We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones.” Bram Stroker, H.P. Lovecraft, Mary Shelley, and Edgar Allan Poe may have been a few of the greatest authors of horror to ever live. Out of all of these authors, Poe may have written the most freighting tales. All of his stories are considered horror, but some of them have more horrific qualities than others. “The Pit And The Pendulum” is one of Poe’s most famous works. “The Pit And The Pendulum” by Edgar Allen Poe meets three qualifications of a true horror story.

One example of this is when the demon says "It was night, and the rain fell; and falling, it was rain, but, having fallen, it was blood” (paragraph 4) this exhibits the tone of the story setting the feel of the rest of the story. Because of this it creates a macabre effect ensuring that the rest of the story will be just as creepy and eerie. Another example of supernatural elements is when Poe illustrates in detail how the demon demonstrates his power like when it states “Then I grew angry and cursed, with the curse of silence, the river, and the lilies, and the wind, and the forest, and the heaven, and the thunder, and the sighs of the water-lilies. “ (paragraph 10) this shows how the demon is quick to anger and puts a curse of silence upon the earth. Showing these supernatural elements it shows the effect of being even more creepy dragging on throughout the

Additionally, “The Pit and the Pendulum” is a nail-biting narration of a prisoner being kept in a dungeon. Unaware of what his fate will be, the narrator assumes he will suffer death by hanging, until he explores his unlit surroundings and finds he is in a dungeon with a deep pit in the floor and a pendulum like scythe swinging from the ceiling above. Left to die, the narrator is saved in his last moments of despair by General Laselle who has taken over the prison as part of his crusade to end the inquisition. Perhaps one of Poe's most aspirant pieces of writing, the narrator in the “The Pit and Pendulum” never relinquishes himself to what the reader may view as an inevitable, certain death.