The Pit And The Pendulum Analysis

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.

When one walks down a dark corridor or a deserted street; dark thoughts and possibilities will come to mind, causing one to want to leave as soon as possible. Gothic literature takes those terrifying thoughts and feelings and puts them into a story, and questions the human ethics of the mind. Gothicism is a dark form of literature popular in the 19th century, which typically features ideas that demonstrate the gloomy side of the imagination. Stories from this literary movement typically include eerie and melancholy content. “The Pit and the Pendulum” by Edgar Allen Poe, one of the most renowned gothic authors, is a prime example of gothic literature. In the tale, the narrator is arrested and imprisoned for an unknown crime by supporters of the Inquisition in Spain. Throughout the story, his captors attempt to brutally kill him. However, he narrowly escapes death and is rescued by French troops, who have secured the prison. This bone-chilling

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.

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

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).

the screams of pain, the pangs of hunger, and merciless evil. The novel recounts the

Death is an important theme in Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories, “The Pit and the Pendulum” and “The Masque of the Red Death”.

Scuttling innocently through the twisting corridors I bore the same expression; head down, shoulders hunched, avoiding any eye contact - my desperate attempts to deter the despot for one day at least. Despite my efforts, there was no escape, as seemingly within the second of having that naively optimistic thought, a cruel, callous voice demanded I surrender my broach. Fear spiked, as it always did, but with it came something else, an alien emotion ... Looking back now, I see that it must have been the cumulative effect of months of torment that brought me to the realisation that at this point I had reached the nadir of my life. Deriding cackles pierced my ears and this time I recognised the emotion, fury. It burned through my veins, along with the memories of the past to form a feeling of overwhelming power. I met the daggers that would usually invoke terror, and calmly, I said “No.”

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.

Edgar Allan Poe was a fictional writer that astonished readers with his many mysterious poems and his tales of horror such as “The Raven”, “Annabelle Lee”, and “The Fall of the house of Usher”.