Isolation In 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.

In “The Pit and the Pendulum”, the atmosphere is dark and unsettling. In addition to the setting and characters, there are various other factors that give the story a creepy feel to it. Furthermore, the narrator’s thoughts and descriptions add to the ominous mood of the story. For example, the tale states, “By long suffering my nerves had been unstrung, until I trembled at the sound of my own voice, and had become in every respect a fitting subject for the species of torture which awaited me” (Poe 5). At this point in the story, the narrator, falling into his torturers’ trap, tips on the verge of insanity and begins to lose hope. The reader can easily picture the narrator, cowering against the wall, eyes wide, flinching at the slightest of sounds. Therefore, along with the horrifying aspects of the torture chamber, the unstable narrator and his thoughts create a foreboding and macabre feeling characteristic to gothic

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

Taking into account the previous descriptions and the definitions of horror and terror we will try to identify which of these stories presents horror and which one may be said to go deeper by portraying terror. The Pit and the pendulum is characterized by having a narrator who seems in absolute use of his mental faculties. As it is mentioned above, this character is aware of what is happening around him and by having a peak of his logical thoughts and feelings the reader experiences the struggle of the narrator to stay alive in a much more personal way. The fact that this character is sane, integrated and coherent in his thinking is one of the reasons why the reader may sense the terror of the story on a whole other level.

Edgar Allen Poe’s The Pit and the Pendulum uses horror and suspicion to build up not only the storyline, but the persona of the narrator in which is also the prisoner. The characteristics of the prisoner ties within the story to create trippy feelings of fear and unassertiveness of whether or not he is truly safe. From the trials that the prisoner has faced, his characteristic of resourcefulness, pessimistic, and terror are revealed and play a salient part of his slick escape.

As you can see, Poe has the narrator terrified of death in the pit. At the same time he has

The chaotic life of Edgar Allan Poe is reflected in his work. The stories The Pit and the Pendulum, and The Cask of Amontillado, are both written using Edgar Allan Poe’s life as a reference. They show elements of his dark depressing life where his mother died of tuberculosis and his dad died as well before he was three. He was then raised as a foster child by his two brothers, Francis and John. He then became a writer of short stories which everyone told him was a mistake. It is also unknown how Poe died which adds yet more mystery to his life. As can be seen, Poe’s life was very dark and dim. This mood is portrayed in Poe’s stories as well. In Cask of Amontillado, Poe writes about a man seeking revenge on his friend and ends up changing him up in the catacombs and then sealing him down there with a wall that he built. The Pit and the Pendulum also has dark elements to it. This story revolves around a prison who fights the battle between jumping into the unknown or letting himself be tortured. Edgar Allan Poe’s writing style in The Pit and the Pendulum and The Cask of Amontillado express conflicts developed by dark and claustrophobic settings, develops a dark mood and tone similar to his own life's mood through dark diction and an immersive point of view, and finally develops a common theme of danger of the unknown by using a limited point of view including ominous, unexplained elements.

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).

In Edgar Allan Poe’s story, “The Pit and the Pendulum.” poe uses the elements of unknowingness, fear, and fight or flight, descriptive words to add suspense to the story. The man within the story is being sentenced to death because of his faith, he is found guilty and then taken to a duongen and tortured, he is put through 3 different ways of tortures before a french general saves him. First when he is laying on the stone table he decides to do this, ¨At length, with a wild desperation at heart, I quickly unclosed my eyes, my worst thoughts, then, were confirmed¨ (Poe #3). The previous sentence shows that he was fearful of the situation he is in. Second when he now knows he can't see he does this, ¨Such a supposition, notwithstanding what we

Purpose Statement: To write a 900 word analytical essay over Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories, “The Pit and the Pendulum” and “The Masque of the Red Death”

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.

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.