Pit And The Pendulum Theme

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

Edgar Allen Poe is one of the greatest Sci-Fi/Mystery writers of all times. Two of his most popular poems, “The Tell Tale Heart” and “The Pit and the Pendulum” have elements that relate to each other but at the same time they differ. The use of suspense in his poems is proficient, and it makes the readers want to read on because they are intrigued and they want to know what is going to happen next! Poe gives a good example of what an unreliable narrator is in his poems, he shows that sometimes they can’t be trusted because of their actions and what they say and do. The themes in the two poems are greatly different, but show a clear panorama of what the poems are going to be about. While the theme in Edgar Allen Poe’s “Tell Tale Heart” and “The Pit and the Pendulum” are different, the way he used suspense and unreliable narrator are alike.

The narrator in this torture chamber is submitted to several kinds of traps and torments: the pit, the rats and the closing walls. He tries to escape from each one of these but every time he succeeds he finds himself in a worse situation than he was before. Inside the chamber he is deprived of the sense of sight so at first he cannot know where he is or what dangers surround him. His will however

The prisoner exemplifies resourcefulness which is shown through his actions of survival. Despite his unstableness, he still manages to remain clever in such a frightening situation. Poe asserts that the prisoner is resourceful considering he uses the hem of his robe to plot out his area: “I tore a part of the hem from the robe, and placed the fragment at full length, and at right angles to the wall. In groping my way around the prison, I could not fail to encounter this rag upon completing the circuit.” (Poe 3). Being that he uses his resources to find his way around the tomb, he learns that he is among a treacherous pit which could mean death. This action alters the whole course of the story due to the possibility of the prisoner falling into the pit. The prisoner continues to show signs of resourcefulness in the toughest situations: “Observing that I remained without motion, one or two of the boldest leaped upon the frame-work and smelt at the

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

In Edgar Allan Poe’s story, “The Pit and the Pendulum,” Poe, uses the horror elements of isolation, madness, and plot twist to add suspense to the story. In the beginning, the narrator is standing in front of what he describes as judges as they decide his fate, which adds suspense because the audience doesn’t know what could happen to the narrator when the judges punish him. Secondly, he is all alone, or so he believe. He is the only one experiencing the things that are being done, he is isolated from everyone and it is very dark. The narrator thinks, “My worst thoughts, then, were confirmed. The blackness of eternal night encompassed me,”(Poe 3) as he lays on the damp ground. Towards the middle, the narrator going mad because the Spanish

The main themes of Edgar Allan Poe’s works are death, perversity, revenge and destruction. The settings he employed in the given short stories, especially in The Fall of the House of Usher and The Black Cat are Gothic. Therefore, naturally the mood of these stories would be dark and sepulchral. However, this is not a trivial employment undertaken to put the reader in a certain kind of zone.

Edgar Allan Poe is known to be one of the greatest poets in history. Although glorified for his artistic genius, his works tend to follow a dismal central theme to fit his dark and gothic style; whether it be death, betrayal, madness, horror, etc. Two of the many Edgar Allan Poe reads are entitled The Pit and the Pendulum and “The Lake.” The Pit and the Pendulum is a short story that follows an unnamed protagonist who has been convicted and sentenced to death. He writes about the torments endured by a prisoner of the Spanish Inquisition.

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”

This essay will discuss the themes in Poe’s writing that mirror his personal life and, in addition, the fear and supernatural motivators for his characters. First, I will discuss Poe’s background and explore how he became best known as a poet for his tales of mystery and macabre.

Sadness, guilt, and fear are some of the most negative emotions that humanity can experience, however they are also the strongest. Edgar Allan Poe, a nineteenth century author and poet, is known primarily for his use of these emotions, as well as the results that may come from these emotions, such as substance abuse, depression, and death. However, the ability to write such elegant, sophisticated works that delve into the very dark recesses of the human mind reflects greatly upon the author himself. Repetitive themes found both in Poe’s stories and in his life deliver insight on the inspiration for this author’s stories. Poe uses themes of death, illness, and depression in order to reflect his own experiences within his writing.

The pit becomes the narrator’s worst fear, and as the walls of the cell close around him he tries to accept his fate, but he won’t accept the pit, fighting until the end when all he can manage is a

Edgar Allan Poe integrates his work in “The Pit and the Pendulum” and “The Tell-Tale Heart” by anonymously creating the narrators in first person point of view. Poe vividly uses imagery to help the reader understand the character of the two narrators; Poe uses his gothic, writing techniques to illustrate the narrators and differentiate them in the two short stories. In both short stories, the narrators are given a role: to be killed or be the killer. Edgar Allan Poe distinguishes the role of the two speakers in “The Pit and the Pendulum and “The Tell-Tale Heart”. Edgar Allan Poe justifies the role of the speaker in “The Pit and the Pendulum” to be the one facing 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.