One of the most renowned authors of horror and gothic tales, Edgar Allan Poe, creates characters that are exceptional and inimitable in their own rights. Of his most popular tales is “The Pit and the Pendulum”, a story so loved that there have been movies based on it. One of the reasons that this tale is still favored to this day is because of the narrator who is telling his story of his trial, punishment, and near-death experience. In Poe’s story, the narrator is recounting a personal tale in which he was captured by the Spanish Inquisition and sentenced to torture and ultimately death. The narrator takes the reader through every detail of the pit in which they threw him and the circumstances that unfolded within the pit. The narrator of “The Pit and the Pendulum” emulates a person suffering through anxiety and uncertainty because of his fascination with death, his precise recollection of his surroundings, and the anonymity …show more content…
Poe writes, “The agony of suspense grew at length intolerable, and I cautiously moved forward, with my arms extended, and my eyes straining from their sockets” (444) which contains the word ‘me’. He uses the first-person perspective to draw the reader in and allow a sense of anonymity in which the reader puts themselves into the narrator shoes. This anonymity creates a universality in which anyone reading the story automatically relates to the character. This induces a sense of panic in the reader because not only are they reading what is happening, they seem to experience the circumstances as if they were actually the ones living through them (Bryant). Furthermore, the namelessness of the narrator not only puts the reader in the shoes of the narrator, it puts the reader’s loved ones in his shoes. The sense of universality within the narrator allows for anyone to take his place, permitting the reader to feel empathy, sympathy, anxiety, and
The Pit and the Pendulum is about a man who is sentenced to THE PIT during the Spanish Inquisition. The story starts out as describing his trial and quick sentence to THE PIT. Next as he is in
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.
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
The Pit and the Pendulum is a short story narrative told by a condemned prisoner during the period of the Spanish Inquisitions. The story takes place in Toledo, Spain and begins with the prisoner describing a delirious state in which he sees robed judges presiding over his sentencing. Prior to the pronounced judgment, he is overtaken by fear and faints. The story continues in vivid detail, as the prisoner describes over a period of days, through lingering periods of consciousness, his torturous entrapment.
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”
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.
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.
But in The Pit and the Pendulum, the hopes of the narrator saved him eventually but still he felt himself to be not in his life on many occasions when he had to endure tortures in the dark and dreadful dungeon. Thus this project had encompassed a bird eye’s view on the facts that were not much known among the admirers of Poe. As a result of the final analysis of the horror short stories, we have unwrapped how horror short stories gained influence from Poe’s life itself and his horror short stories, The Black Cat and The Pit and the Pendulum are with much logical clarity and finally the selected short stories shudder fear and thus are proved to be the dark of the
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 loquacious Edgar Allan Poe said, “There is no beauty without some strangeness.” In the stories “The Pit and the Pendulum”, “The Fall of the House of Usher”, and “Eleonora”, there are many different approaches to common things that we still deal with to this day, such as death. Within each story, there are also several different elements of superstition, and each one is unique and different in some way. Although, some of the stories do not have an element of superstition. Consequently, the characters of the story set the tone by influencing the mood and setting within their minds and through their actions. Moreover, each story’s reaction to facing mortality is different, but they are also alike in an abundance of ways.
I chose this story because of the setting, the Spanish Inquisition. The main character in “The Pit and Pendulum”, was feeling a mix of emotion in the anticipation of his death. “I prayed --I wearied heaven with my prayer for its more speedy descent. I grew frantically mad, and struggled to force myself upward against the sweep of the fearful scimitar. And then I fell suddenly calm, and lay smiling at the glittering death, as a child at some rare
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 Pit and the Pendulum” is a short story about a guy who is at trial before the spanish inquisitors. He receives the death penalty for an unknown crime. He was put in a cell in darkness where he discovered a, what seemed to be endless, pit. He soon found himself strapped down on a wooden board with only head head and left arm free. There was a pendulum descending down on him, waiting to take away his life.
In Edgar Allan Poe’s story, “The Pit and the Pendulum”, Poe, uses the horror elements of madness, anxiety/disorientation, and plot twist to add suspense to the story. A guy is found guilty then was placed in a dungeon, he tries to escape the elements that the people throw his way as they watch. The first horror element of madness is important part to the story. As time passed the pendulum was still moving: “The odor of the sharp steel forced itself into my nostrils” (Poe 8). He sat there growing mad and praying that the pendulum would speed and kill him faster, as he struggled to force himself up to get it done.
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.