Roberto de Jess Daz Padilla Nov 17th, 2009

Essay on The Pit and the Pendulum by Edgar Allan Poe In this short story, Poe demonstrates his skills to create fear in the reader through the use of first-person narrative. Here the narrator is not just a component of the storytelling, he is the whole story. Set during Inquisition times, the main character is isolated from everything else, theres not any major interaction with other characters. It is just the prisoner and the prison. Since all the incidents are told by him, we know as much as he knows and what he describes is the only truth for us. However, it doesnt mean the narrators point of view is the most conscious at all. Mental factors, such as delusion or panic, influence his perception of whats happening. Likewise, the decay and hostility of the cell triggers disturbing thoughts about his immediate future that, somehow, still carry a slight hope. And the idea of time is highly significant to the characters chances of survival. Put into a situation of rather psychological than physical torture, it is evident the narrator would distort the events he is going through but, to what extent? Since the beginning were only given glimpses of the trial in a form that we dont get to know why the main character is in jail. We are shown this whole section through the impression particular images left in the narrators mind:
I saw the lips of the black-robed judges. They appeared to me white -- whiter than the sheet upon which I trace these words -- and thin even to grotesqueness; thin with the intensity of their expression of firmness, of immovable resolution, of stern contempt of human torture. I saw that the decrees of what to me was fate were still issuing from those lips. I saw them writhe with a deadly locution. I saw them fashion the syllables of my name, and I shuddered, because no sound succeeded

Another clear example of the contrast between the characters awareness and the real events occurs during the first attempt of describing the room in the dark which turned out to be completely different when the lights went on.

Besides the narrator the closest thing to a character is the actual building in which the action happens, its constant changes in structure reflect those in the narrators state of mind. The prison has its own very own dark and horrifying features, from the demonic paintings on the walls to the razor pendulum hanging on the ceiling and the unspeakable pit at the center of the room. Poe emphasizes on these repulsive characteristics by means of evocative adjectives:
The entire surface of this metallic enclosure was rudely daubed in all the hideous and repulsive devices to which the charnel superstition of the monks has given rise. The figures of fiends in aspects of menace, with skeleton forms and other more really fearful images, overspread and disfigured the walls.

The variety of mechanisms designed by the inquisitors make the character spends his time thinking not exactly on what his final destination would be but how it is going to happen and if he has any chance at escaping that seemingly unavoidable fate.

Less explicitly, time is also another relevant motif of the story. Time cannot be measured by the regular parameters in the cell, and the narrator never has a clear notion of the amount of hours and days he has been imprisoned. Still, there are other devices that let him know the elapsed time in a most terrifying style. The fact that the razor blade pendulum is set against an image of the father Time makes the metaphor look even clearer. As the ticking from a clock, the pendulum moves monotonously, always back and forth, producing an equally exasperating sound and it slowly undermine the narrators mental sanity as it approaches gradually to his heart as it is described in the next paragraph:
Down -- steadily down it crept. I took a frenzied pleasure in contrasting its downward with its lateral velocity. To the right -- to the left -- far and wide -- with the shriek of a damned spirit! to my heart with the stealthy pace of the tiger! I alternately laughed and howled, as the one or the other idea grew predominant.

Near the end, this countdown effect increases dramatically as the walls push the character towards the pit. There is not enough time to devise a solution and he realizes that his fate is no longer in his hands.

In conclusion, even though there is only one human character involved in this short story, plenty of interaction still occurs. The same way the narrators altered reasoning affects his awareness of the circumstances, also the ominous physical settings contribute to make him think in a certain form, and even an intangible concept like time plays a role on shaping the narrators way of thinking.