Literary Analysis: The Pit And The Pendulum

It is hard to show the positives of an animal being in a cage. Because an animal being in a cage brings to mind the word control. It has come to be a harsh word, almost to imply malevolence when in conversation. However, the word control can be interpreted differently. As in, when one controls something, they are able to have a grasp upon it. Upon closer examination, one can interpret something more detailed, and maybe different entirely. Thus, a zookeeper, who controls various animals in sectioned areas, would rather want to simply understand the animals rather than purposely restrict them. For writers, to understand, to remember, to analyze, is to write. Their control is their works. For Edgar Allen Poe, a writer, his works try to help him
Poe uses his writing to try and make sense of all the misfortunes within his life. Poe believes that his misfortunes have some reasoning behind them, and he wants to know what. So he uses his position as an author to become a god-like figure who determines the fate of his characters. Outside the minds of his characters, Poe can reflect from his characters mistakes, to learn how to avoid the paths to doom. In The Pit and The Pendulum, Poe stubbornly places the main character into doom. He provides context however, that the main character is a victim of The Spanish Inquisition. But even with this detail, the main character’s destiny still is undeserving of doom. Poe makes this inadequacy apparent to the degree that the main character questions his circumstances. He ponders, “Yet not for a moment did I suppose myself actually dead. Such a supposition, notwithstanding what we read in fiction, is altogether inconsistent with real existence... the condemned, I knew, perished usually at the auto-da-fes, and one of these had been held on the very night of the day of my trial” (Poe 6). The main character cannot accept that he is doomed, that he has done nothing deserving of execution. This is congruent to how Poe feels about his own life. Like the main character, Poe believes that he too has been wrongly damned. But unlike real life, the circumstances in The Pit and The Pendulum can be controlled. In real life, Poe cannot control his fate, so he becomes a deity through his writing to understand how fate is determined. As a divine being, Poe is supposed to be reasonable, but in The Pit and The Pendulum when the main character faces a lose-lose situation, miraculously he is saved and escapes the situation entirely. This is what Poe wants to happen to him in the end. Despite how unreasonable it is, Poe wants to be saved; because he believes that an