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

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

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.

Edgar Allan Poe used fear to attract his readers into his gothic world. Poe realized that fear intrigues as well as frightens, and sew it as a perfect motif for many of his stories, particularly The Fall of the House of Usher. Poe emphasized the mysterious, desolate, and gloomy surroundings throughout the story to set up the fear that got the reader involved. Then he extended the fear to the characters in order to reveal the importance of facing and overcoming fear. Poe suggested in the story that the denial of fears can lead to madness and insanity. This has clearly shown through the weakening of Roderick Usher's mind and the resulting impact on the narrator of the story.

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.

What happens when an individual descends into madness? This process is the focus of both Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Tell-Tale Heart”, and Emily Dickinson’s poem “I Felt a Funeral in my Brain.” Both texts use many structural techniques and literary devices to draw attention to the central idea of insanity. This insanity takes the form of a deviation from what the reader would consider normal. In spite of the two authors’ drastically different writing styles, one element remains constant, the masterful use of punctuation.

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

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”

Edgar Allan Poe has a distinctive and dark way of writing (Poe & Kennedy, pp.22). His mysterious style of writing appeals to passion and sentimentality. Poe’s most prominent works of fiction are gothic. His stories tend to have similar recurring theme of either death, lost love or both. Poe’s psychologically thrilling stories examining the depths of the humanoid psyche earned him much fame throughout his lifetime and after his death. And this distinctive style of writing made him possess his own style of wiring (Arbor, pp.71). There is a psychological concentration which is an important characteristic of Poe’s literatures, particularly the tales of horror that encompass his best and well-known works, such as The Black Cat and The Raven which

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

stories, madness again is playing a key role in the plot. In this short story Poe used

The setting presented in this story has a very dark and gloomy atmosphere which has been used as a technique to help outline the scene. It is set in the one location; a bedroom. Poe describes the room as being “black as pitch with the thick darkness,” which deepens the effect of terror. The night setting gives the text an eerie feel as it focuses on the horrors of night time. This horror creates a noticeable impact which is recognisable when the victim cried out “who’s there?” against the backdrop of frighteningly still silence. Ultimately, the way in which Poe’s story is set builds anxiety and fear in the reader.

In a true horror story, the feeling of terror is often created by suspense. Suspense is the anticipation and anxiety of the unknown, which is a common factor in “The Pit And The Pendulum.” The narrator tells us that “ I am sick- sick unto death.” This description of certain death creates the feeling of anticipation. Poe often uses repetition to create suspense. In this story, Poe creates this feeling by the lack of description. The reader does not know what the storyteller is on trial for. This creates the feeling of the unknown. Another part of the story that creates tension is when the narrator is exploring the dungeon. A feeling of complete solitude and lack of knowledge while in the tomb creates anxiety. The action of the

In many of his stories, it seemed as though Poe craved to see the pain of sorrow in others. The unstable mind motivates the body to act out in such a violent manner in order to satisfy its desires. In “The Cask of Amontillado” the protagonist, Montressor, “[hearkens] in vain for a reply” of agony from his enemy. Poe wanted to hear the suffering of his adversaries; he needed to hear them feel the pain he felt. His desire to force this punishment onto others, questions his sanity and reason. Frances Winwar, Author of the The Haunted Place, suggests that the discovery of a female body found on the Hudson “roused the sleuth Edgar Allan Poe in his alter ego.” (Winwar 226). The darkness that Poe encountered and experienced was the reason he developed the insane characters in his stories.