THE PIT

AND THE
PENDULUM
 I. INTRODUCTION OF THE AUTHOR

Edgar Allan Poe, (born January 19, 1809, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.—died October 7, 1849, Baltimore, Maryland), American short-story
writer, poet, critic, and editor who is famous for his cultivation of mystery and the macabre. His tale “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841)
initiated the modern detective story, and the atmosphere in his tales of horror is unrivaled in American fiction. His “The Raven” (1845) numbers
among the best-known poems in the national literature.
Poe was the son of the English-born actress Elizabeth Arnold Poe and David Poe, Jr., an actor from Baltimore. After his mother died in
Richmond, Virginia, in 1811, he was taken into the home of John Allan, a Richmond merchant (presumably his godfather), and of his childless
wife. He was later taken to Scotland and England (1815–20), where he was given a classical education that was continued in Richmond. For 11
months in 1826 he attended the University of Virginia, but his gambling losses at the university so incensed his guardian that he refused to let
him continue, and Poe returned to Richmond to find his sweetheart, (Sarah) Elmira Royster, engaged. He went to Boston, where in 1827 he
published a pamphlet of youthful Byronic poems, Tamerlane, and Other Poems. Poverty forced him to join the army under the name of Edgar A.
Perry, but, on the death of Poe’s foster mother, John Allan purchased his release from the army and helped him get an appointment to the U.S.
Military Academy at West Point. Before going, Poe published a new volume at Baltimore, Al Aaraaf, Tamerlane, and Minor Poems (1829). He
successfully sought expulsion from the academy, where he was absent from all drills and classes for a week. He proceeded to New York City
and brought out a volume of Poems, containing several masterpieces, some showing the influence of John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and
Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He then returned to Baltimore, where he began to write stories. In 1833 his “MS. Found in a Bottle” won $50 from a
Baltimore weekly, and by 1835 he was in Richmond as editor of the Southern Literary Messenger. There he made a name as a critical reviewer
and married his young cousin Virginia Clemm, who was only 13. Poe seems to have been an affectionate husband and son-in-law.
Poe was dismissed from his job in Richmond, apparently for drinking, and went to New York City. Drinking was in fact to be the bane of
his life. To talk well in a large company he needed a slight stimulant, but a glass of sherry might start him on a spree; and, although he rarely
succumbed to intoxication, he was often seen in public when he did. This gave rise to the conjecture that Poe was a drug addict, but according to
medical testimony he had a brain lesion. While in New York City in 1838 he published a long prose narrative, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon
Pym, combining (as so often in his tales) much factual material with the wildest fancies. It is considered one inspiration of Herman Melville’s
Moby Dick. In 1839 he became coeditor of Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine in Philadelphia. There a contract for a monthly feature stimulated
him to write “William Wilson” and “The Fall of the House of Usher,” stories of supernatural horror. The latter contains a study of a neurotic
now known to have been an acquaintance of Poe, not Poe himself.
Later in 1839 Poe’s Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque appeared (dated 1840). He resigned from Burton’s about June 1840 but
returned in 1841 to edit its successor, Graham’s Lady’s and Gentleman’s Magazine, in which he printed “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”—the
first detective story. In 1843 his “The Gold Bug” won a prize of $100 from the Philadelphia Dollar Newspaper, which gave him great publicity.
In 1844 he returned to New York, wrote “The Balloon Hoax” for the Sun, and became subeditor of the New York Mirror under N.P. Willis,
thereafter a lifelong friend. In the New York Mirror of January 29, 1845, appeared, from advance sheets of the American Review, his most
famous poem, “The Raven,” which gave him national fame at once. Poe then became editor of the Broadway Journal, a short-lived weekly, in
which he republished most of his short stories, in 1845. During this last year the now-forgotten poet Frances Sargent Locke Osgood pursued Poe.
Virginia did not object, but “Fanny’s” indiscreet writings about her literary love caused great scandal. His The Raven and Other Poems and a
selection of his Tales came out in 1845, and in 1846 Poe moved to a cottage at Fordham (now part of New York City), where he wrote for
Godey’s Lady’s Book (May–October 1846) “The Literati of New York City”—gossipy sketches on personalities of the day, which led to a libel
suit.
Poe’s wife, Virginia, died in January 1847. The following year he went to Providence, Rhode Island, to woo Sarah Helen Whitman, a
poet. There was a brief engagement. Poe had close but platonic entanglements with Annie Richmond and with Sarah Anna Lewis, who helped
him financially. He composed poetic tributes to all of them. In 1848 he also published the lecture “Eureka,” a transcendental “explanation” of the
universe, which has been hailed as a masterpiece by some critics and as nonsense by others. In 1849 he went south, had a wild spree in
Philadelphia, but got safely to Richmond, where he finally became engaged to Elmira Royster, by then the widowed Mrs. Shelton, and spent a
happy summer with only one or two relapses. He enjoyed the companionship of childhood friends and an unromantic friendship with a young
poet, Susan Archer Talley.
Poe had some forebodings of death when he left Richmond for Baltimore late in September. There he died, although whether from
drinking, heart failure, or other causes was still uncertain in the 21st century. He was buried in Westminster Presbyterian churchyard in
Baltimore.
Legacy
Poe’s work owes much to the concern of Romanticism with the occult and the satanic. It owes much also to his own feverish dreams, to
which he applied a rare faculty of shaping plausible fabrics out of impalpable materials. With an air of objectivity and spontaneity, his
productions are closely dependent on his own powers of imagination and an elaborate technique. His keen and sound judgment as an appraiser of
contemporary literature, his idealism and musical gift as a poet, his dramatic art as a storyteller, considerably appreciated in his lifetime, secured
him a prominent place among universally known men of letters.
The outstanding fact in Poe’s character is a strange duality. The wide divergence of contemporary judgments on the man seems almost to
point to the coexistence of two persons in him. With those he loved he was gentle and devoted. Others, who were the butt of his sharp criticism,
found him irritable and self-centred and went so far as to accuse him of lack of principle. Was it, it has been asked, a double of the man rising
from harrowing nightmares or from the haggard inner vision of dark crimes or from appalling graveyard fantasies that loomed in Poe’s unstable
being?
Much of Poe’s best work is concerned with terror and sadness, but in ordinary circumstances the poet was a pleasant companion. He
talked brilliantly, chiefly of literature, and read his own poetry and that of others in a voice of surpassing beauty. He admired Shakespeare and
Alexander Pope. He had a sense of humour, apologizing to a visitor for not keeping a pet raven. If the mind of Poe is considered, the duality is
still more striking. On one side, he was an idealist and a visionary. His yearning for the ideal was both of the heart and of the imagination. His
sensitivity to the beauty and sweetness of women inspired his most touching lyrics (“To Helen,” “Annabel Lee,” “Eulalie,” “To One in
Paradise”) and the full-toned prose hymns to beauty and love in “Ligeia” and “Eleonora.” In “Israfel” his imagination carried him away from the
material world into a dreamland. This Pythian mood was especially characteristic of the later years of his life.
More generally, in such verses as “The Valley of Unrest,” “Lenore,” “The Raven,” “For Annie,” and “Ulalume” and in his prose tales,
his familiar mode of evasion from the universe of common experience was through eerie thoughts, impulses, or fears. From these materials he
drew the startling effects of his tales of death (“The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Masque of the Red Death,” “The Facts in the Case of M.
Valdemar,” “The Premature Burial,” “The Oval Portrait,” “Shadow”), his tales of wickedness and crime (“Berenice,” “The Black Cat,” “William
Wilson,” “The Imp of the Perverse,” “The Cask of Amontillado,” “The Tell-Tale Heart”), his tales of survival after dissolution (“Ligeia,”
“Morella,” “Metzengerstein”), and his tales of fatality (“The Assignation,” “The Man of the Crowd”). Even when he does not hurl his characters
into the clutch of mysterious forces or onto the untrodden paths of the beyond, he uses the anguish of imminent death as the means of causing
the nerves to quiver (“The Pit and the Pendulum”), and his grotesque invention deals with corpses and decay in an uncanny play with the
aftermath of death.

II. SYNOPSIS

First published in 1843 and subsequently revised by Poe for an 1845 issue of The Broadway Journal, "The Pit and the Pendulum" is told by
an unnamed first-person narrator whose credibility actually rises even as he is subjected to increasingly fantastic tortures. At the outset, the
narrator acknowledges that he is "sick," but we immediately realize that his illness is not a form of insanity, but an hallucinatory condition that
can be explained by the physical abuse that he has already undergone. Although he is temporarily deranged, the narrator is nonetheless rational.
He is, in fact, a victim of the Spanish Inquisition in Toledo, accused of some unidentified (implicitly heretical) crime, and has been bound for
sentencing. The narrator first hears the sound of his judges in a "dreamy hum," but is then unable to hear at all. Instead, he sees the white lips of
the black-robed inquisitors as they pass sentence upon him. He focuses his sight on seven tall candles, which at first appear to him as angels, but
then dissolve into meaningless forms. The whole scene, including the judges, vanishes before the narrator's eyes. He is now engulfed by utter
darkness, and a single sweet note ringing in his ears that he associates with the relief of death. The narrator swoons and lapses into a limbo state
of consciousness: he is aware of his own existence but he is disassociated from sensory contact with the external world.

The narrator suddenly experiences a sense of motion and when his full mental faculties return, he is able to recall his trial in full. He lies on
his back, but he keeps his eyes shut, fearful of what he might see. He recalls tales of the horrible deaths that the torturers of the Spanish
Inquisition have inflicted upon their victims. When he does open his eyes, he still cannot discern what his situation is because there it is pitch
black. He initially fears that he has been buried alive; but when he is able to stand erect, he recognizes that he is in some sort of cell where he
may be starved to death. He knows that the judges have imposed a death sentence, and that the only remaining questions are how and when it
will be executed.

In complete darkness, the narrator tries to glean whatever he can about his physical surroundings. The walls and the floor of his enclosure are
moist and slippery, and appear to be constructed of stone. He attempts to trace out its seemingly circular dimensions, marking a starting point
with a bit of fabric from the coarse robe in which his torturers have dressed him and then counting paces until he reaches it again. In his
weakened condition, however, he is unable to complete this exercise. He collapses and falls asleep from exhaustion. When he awakens, he finds
a loaf of bread and a pitcher of water at his side. The inquisitors plainly intend to keep him alive for the presumed purpose of increasing his
torment. He resumes his effort to estimate the size of the dungeon cell: he reckons that it is fifty yards in circumference. The hem of his coarse
prison robe becomes tangled. He slips on the floor and falls on his face. In this position, he senses that his chin is elevated above the remainder
of his head and realizes that he is lying on the edge of a large circular pit. He stands and drops a piece of stone into it. The time elapsed by the
stone's fall indicates that the pit is a deep chasm, the sound of a splash at the end of its descent indicates that water lies in its lower reaches. Just
then, he hears the sound of a door opening and closing overhead. He is sure that he is being watched and that his observers fully expected him to
fall into the pit. He has an impulse to simply jump into it, fearing that by remaining alive he will be subjected to even greater horrors. But he
pulls back when he recalls that a slow, agonizing death awaits him there as well. He sleeps and again finds bread and water at his side when he
awakens. The water, however, has been drugged, and he soon lapses into unconsciousness once more.

The effects of the drug wear off, and when the narrator comes to he finds that his cell is illuminated. Now able to see, the narrator realizes
that his blind conception of the dungeon was wrong. The enclosure is smaller than he reckoned, its shape is not circular but square-like, and its
walls are actually made of metal. Moreover, he sees that the walls are embellished with paintings of hellish figures; images of skeletons, fiends,
and devils staring back at him. Worst of all, the narrator is now unable to move freely. He has been strapped and bound into a wood rack. The
torturers have placed a dish of highly spiced meat within his reach, but this time there is no pitcher of water to slake his thirst.

The narrator looks upward at the cell's ceiling. There he sees the traditional image of Father Time, but instead of a scythe, Time appears to be
holding a huge pendulum. Rather than being a two-dimensional painting, Time and the pendulum seem to be some kind of machine. The narrator
"fancies" that the pendulum is moving in slow, short sweeps. When he averts his gaze from the pendulum, he sees that the cell is filled with
large, ravenous rats who have emerged from the pit in search of food. Focusing once more on the pendulum, he notes with alarm that it is now
swinging more rapidly, in broader strokes and that it is descending upon him. Its edge is a razor-like blade aimed directly at his breast. Having
escaped the pit, the narrator now faces the "milder" death of the pendulum. As the pendulum descends still further, its intended victim lapses into
a swoon. When he awakens, he notes that the descent of the pendulum has been temporarily halted and that most of the meat at his side has been
eaten by the rats. He experiences a brief sense of hope, but dismisses it; there is no cause for hope.

The pendulum is now within a few inches of the narrator's breast as he lies face up in bondage. Just then, he realizes that if he can free one of
his hands, he can then untie the larger strap that binds him to the wooden rack. The narrator takes the last morsel of spicy meat on the dish and
rubs it on one of the bandages with which his hands have been bound. Hundreds of rats swarm across his body. He feels their teeth loosening the
bandage but remains motionless. His plan works. The rats bite through the bandage, his hand is freed, and he is able to untie the longer strap that
holds him on the wooden rack. He has escaped from the pendulum's blade.

The narrator's sense of triumph is brief. He is "Free!---and in the grasp of the Inquisition!" The demonic priests are still watching him.
Immediately after he steps away from his wooden "bed of horror," the pendulum ceases its movement and the whole apparatus is drawn up into
the ceiling. The narrator becomes aware of light streaming through the fissures of the cell's metal walls. The horrible images painted on its walls
seem to glow in brilliant colors now, and the he breathes in the vapors of hot iron. To his horror, the narrator finds that the walls of the dungeon
are being heated. He rushes toward the pit and the coolness of its well, but draws back and begins to cry. He then recognizes that the very shape
of the cell is changing from that of a rough square into that of a diamond. The narrator is being forced toward the pit. He wishes for any death
but that which awaits him in the pit, but he knows that this is exactly the doom that his torturers have planned for him. As the walls close in, the
narrator is forced to the pit's edge. With less than an inch of foothold remaining, he stops struggling, lets out a scream, and closes his eyes,
tottering on the brink of the abyss.

At the last moment, the narrator hears human voices and the sound of a trumpet's blast. The walls of his cell suddenly rush back, and an
outstretched arm catches him just as he is about to topple into the pit. The arm belongs to the French General Lasalle. The narrator concludes
that the French army has liberated Toledo from the Inquisition, that his tormentors are now captive themselves, and that he has been liberated
from the horrid fate that they had devised for him.

III. ANALYSIS

Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory

THE PENDULUM
Looking upward, I surveyed the ceiling of my prison. It was some thirty or forty feet overhead, and constructed much as the side walls. In one of
its panels a very singular figure riveted my whole attention. 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. There was
something, however, in the appearance of this machine which caused me to regard it more attentively. While I gazed directly upward at it (for its
position was immediately over my own), I fancied that I saw it in motion. In an instant afterward the fancy was confirmed. Its sweep was brief,
and of course slow. I watched it for some minutes, somewhat in fear but more in wonder. Wearied at length with observing its dull movement, I
turned my eyes upon the other objects in the cell.
To understand the passage, first you have to know how the figure of Time is "commonly represented." As Poe mentions, he's usually got
a scythe. Does that remind you of anyone else? Well, it should. The figure of Time has its basis in, among other things, the Grim Reaper. Yep,
the guy that brings death.
SETTING

Toledo, Spain, toward the end of the Spanish Inquisition

Rooted(ish) in History

Spanish Inquisition. Ugh. Okay, we just had to get that out. We know from the very beginning of the story that it takes place during the Spanish
Inquisition in Toledo, Spain. But all that really tells us is: (a) that our narrator is probably being punished for a crime related to religious heresy
(i.e. not agreeing with the people in charge), and (b) that it takes place sometime between the thirteenth and nineteenth centuries. Hmm, not very
helpful.
At the end of the story, though, we find out that this is all going down toward the end of the Inquisition. Okay, so we're in the early 1800s, when
Napoleon and his guys turned on their allies, invaded Spain, and (kind of) ended the Inquisition. Although the exact endpoint of the Inquisition is
hard to pinpoint, the rise of Napoleon sounded the death knell of what was, essentially, a dying regime.
Be careful, though. Sure, General Lasalle was a real guy, but he didn't have anything to do with the capture of Toledo. On a similarly historically
fuzzy note: the seriously crazy torture devices described by our narrator probably weren't being used in the 1800s. These sound more like the
kinds of things that were popular in the Middle Ages (you know, the ones you see at museumsthese days). Oh, and there's really no religious
content to the story – the narrator says himself that he's been passed over in the autos de fé which are usually reserved for heretics. So basically,
everything we thought we knew from the setting is kind of, well, wrong.

GENRE

Horror Fiction
Horror: the word appears thirteen times in "The Pit and the Pendulum," and with good reason. It's the very thing the story is meant to evoke.
What could be more horrible, really, than a dank dungeon, a bottomless pit, a killer pendulum, and the scariest contracting room this side of Star
Wars Episode IV: A New Hope?

Philosophical, Feverish, Urgent, Serious, Dark

With "The Pit and the Pendulum," Poe gives us a story as written by a man saved from the brink of death. Though our narrator has escaped
execution, he cannot escape from his memory – and it shows. Every paragraph is filled not only with an intense description of harrowing events,
but also with a serious investigation of their meaning. He's always pondering, or reflecting, or thinking. This philosophical thought process is in
sharp contrast to the brutal death we're imagining is possible for him. Maybe that's the point?
There is also an urgency to the writing – we get the feeling that our narrator needs to tell his story, and fast; it's as if he hasn't gotten his head
around the whole "I've been saved!" thing quite yet.
And finally, considering the horrible events narrated, it's no surprise that "The Pit and the Pendulum" is overwhelmingly dark and serious; as the
narrator himself says, the only hope he experiences is that

FLORID, DRAMATIC, REPETITIVE, RHETORICAL, SENSORY

Ah, the Drama of Rhetoric

Poe wants everyone reading "The Pit and the Pendulum" to feel what the narrator feels. Considering the things he feels – fear, terror, horror, etc.
– it's no wonder that our author has to resort to some drastic measures. Poe relies heavily on rhetorical tricks in order to bring his message home
and strike terror into our hearts.
Chief among these tools is repetition. It's there from the very first line: "I was sick – sick unto death with that long agony" . By doubly
emphasizing "sick," Poe makes it very clear that our narrator isn't feeling very well – it also allows him to modify it, to give it more power.
When he adds that phrase "unto death," well, we know exactly how bad he's feeling.
Repetition is just one of many tricks, but it is perhaps Poe's favorite. Later on in the same paragraph, he writes, "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" . Okay,
so we know not only that the narrator saw these things, but we get an idea of how unrelenting and powerful each image is; each stands out,
alone, in its own sentence; each has the power to exist independently of the others. Pretty neat.
Still, the most direct instance of repetition comes when our narrator is watching the pendulum come ever-closer to his body. Look at how Poe
begins three consecutive paragraphs:
Down – steadily down it crept. […]
Down – certainly, relentlessly down. […]
"Down – still unceasingly – still inevitably down."
Shiver.
So not only does Poe repeat "down" at the beginning of each paragraph – he repeats it within each sentence, too. This kind of language is totally,
unapologetically dramatic – some would say, to a fault. There's no question this stuff is over the top, but then again, so is the world Poe
describes.

SENSE THE HORROR

A lot of people praise "The Pit and the Pendulum" for its realism. Most of Poe's stories aren't really rooted as much in reality, and most of his
narrators are usually helped out in some supernatural way (as opposed to, say, by the arm of a French general).
So how does he achieve this realism? Well, the things that are most real to us are the things we can see, hear, smell, taste, and touch, right? So
Poe goes ahead and writes a story filled with sensory words, phrases, and images. Even the pendulum alone requires us to engage in almost all
our senses: he sees it, of course; he hears it "hissing"; he feels the "vibration" it makes; and he smells its "acrid breath." The only thing he doesn't
do is taste the darn thing (but he was so close, he may as well have).
The sensory experience, realistic to its core, heightens the horror and makes this story stand out among the rest.

Florid, Dramatic, Repetitive, Rhetorical, Sensory

Ah, the Drama of Rhetoric

Poe wants everyone reading "The Pit and the Pendulum" to feel what the narrator feels. Considering the things he feels – fear, terror, horror, etc.
– it's no wonder that our author has to resort to some drastic measures. Poe relies heavily on rhetorical tricks in order to bring his message home
and strike terror into our hearts.
By doubly emphasizing "sick," Poe makes it very clear that our narrator isn't feeling very well – it also allows him to modify it, to give it more
power. When he adds that phrase "unto death," well, we know exactly how bad he's feeling.
Repetition is just one of many tricks, but it is perhaps Poe's favorite. Later on in the same paragraph, he writes, "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" . Okay,
so we know not only that the narrator saw these things, but we get an idea of how unrelenting and powerful each image is; each stands out,
alone, in its own sentence; each has the power to exist independently of the others. Pretty neat.
Still, the most direct instance of repetition comes when our narrator is watching the pendulum come ever-closer to his body. Look at how Poe
begins three consecutive paragraphs:
Down – steadily down it crept. […]
Down – certainly, relentlessly down. […]
"Down – still unceasingly – still inevitably down."
Shiver.
So not only does Poe repeat "down" at the beginning of each paragraph – he repeats it within each sentence, too. This kind of language is totally,
unapologetically dramatic – some would say, to a fault. There's no question this stuff is over the top, but then again, so is the world Poe
describes.
Reflection

THE PIT
Yes, it's a big, deep hole in the ground, the kind of hole into which you definitely don't want to fall. But hang on a second. What's that word we
used? Fall? That's a big word for Catholics, who "fall," metaphorically speaking, every time they sin. (That first big sin, the Original, courtesy of
Adam and Eve, is called the Fall with a capital "F.") And, you know where you fall if you keep "falling," so to speak? That's right: Hell. Yikes.
Suddenly this pit just took on a whole new meaning.
So, it makes sense that the inquisitors want to punish our narrator by creating their own little hell. And our guy is totally aware of it: "My
cognisance of the pit," he writes, "had become known to the inquisitorial agents – the pit, whose horrors had been destined for so bold a recusant
as myself, the pit, typical of hell, and regarded by rumour as the Ultima Thule of all their punishments" .
So there you have it: "the pit, typical of hell" – "typical" in this case meaning "symbolic of" or "symbolizing." Throw in those spooky, red hot,
glowing demons and, well, there you have it. H-E-double hockey sticks.

Acknowledgement
I want to extend my heartfelt appreciation and gratitude to the Almighty God who is the greatest source of all gifs, knowledge, wisdom and
countless blessings to all the wonderful people who never ceased extending their support, assistance, knowledge and talents for the
accomplishment of my analysis.