Pit And Pendulum

There were three main punishments to trials in the Spanish Inquisition. The punishments were being relaxed, reconciled, and penanced. The most minor punishment was being penanced. People were fined, banished from the country or forced to wear an embarrassing hat called Sanbenito to show to the public that they have sinned. After the person’s time of wearing the hat it was hung up so the public humiliation would continue for many years to come. Being reconciled was the second worst punishment. People were sentenced to different punishments if they were reconciled. They were sentenced to row the galleys for extensive periods of time, flogging, or serve long prison terms. All of the person’s property and goods were taken if they were reconciled. Being relaxed is ironically the most serious punishment involving death. People were burned at the stake alive. If they died or escaped while awaiting their trial they were burned in effigy, which is a sculpture of a person. This punishment was for heretics that didn’t repent or those who had been on trial before. Auto da fe was a special form of being relaxed. There was a ceremony that took place in public. It was a big event and was planned ahead of time.

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

The victim was strapped to a table with a pot of rats upended on his stomach. Then a fire was lit atop the cauldron. The rats had no choice but to burrow into the condemned’s stomach.

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.

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.

The temporal setting “oppress the character with the shape of a pendulum” (3) He fears its deadly velocity which represents his final hours of life. He feels terror of the doom that will “cut” his time on earth. As everyone knows, this symbolizes that death is inevitable.

When he finished his breakfast he decided it was time to get rid of the body. As he was heading to the general’s room he got lost like as if he was lost in a maze. Soon he found his way there.

This was the start of the first inquisition. After that, it was a common practice in much of Europe to take Heretics before a trial, then inflict torture on them forcing them to convert. Those that did not convert were sent to a public burning or hanging. In 1252 AD, Pope Innocent IV agreed to use inquisitors to torture sinners who would not repent their sins and confess. By the fifteen hundreds, the Inquisition became corrupt, powerful, and greedy.

Humiliation, Pain and Death: The Execution of Criminals in New France,” is an article that puts

describes Farquhar as a “vast pendulum,” spinning out of control when he is plummeting to his

During the entire short story, the narrator is stuck inside of his prison cell that he refers to as an apartment……. The exact time period is not given, however, it is towards the end of the inquisition, around 1834. This is shown when the narrator is saved in the end, because the inquisition is over. Thus, it can be inferred that the character is being punished on religious means. However, the time period and torture the narrator receives do not correlate. The torture the narrator endures would be the kind of torture given during the Middle Ages, year 500-1000. Since the story takes place around the early 1800s, Poe used the historical context of the Spanish Inquisition and old fashioned torture tactics to create his own gruesome nightmare.

Time ticking, a blade slowly inching closer to him, rats feeding off of his flesh. Here is Edgar Allan Poe first person narration from “The Pit and the Pendulum.” Poe choose to write “The Pit and the Pendulum” in first person to demonstrate the readers the terrified emotions of the individual. In first person nothings stands in between the character’s consciousness and the reader. The “Pit and the Pendulum has to be in the first person point of view because the reader needs to see the story through the narrators eyes, and nothing should stand in between the character’s thoughts and the reader.

The short story, “The Pit and The Pendulum”, written by Edgar Allan Poe in 1843. During the story, an unknown man is threatened to death during the Spanish Inquisition, which its purpose was to find and punish Jews and Muslims. This man was

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.