In Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Pit and the Pendulum,” written 1843, and “using the anguish of imminent death as the means of causing the nerves to quiver” (Edgar Allan Poe, 2015), he takes the reader into the mind of a man who is tortured by various means by some unknown person or persons for reasons that are not given. The themes of death and time are portrayed strongly in this story and produce a sense of anxiety and uncertainty. “The first- person narration, in which the ‘I’ remains unnamed, causes the reader to identify with the protagonist” (Myers 1922). I feel that the narrator remains unnamed for the reason of not giving information that would further distract the reader from the details and emotions of the pit itself, and not to be biased in any way. Most of the story takes place inside a type of prison cell that the narrator, who is the only prisoner, was placed in after some kind of trial. Because the amount of consciousness that the narrator has comes and goes, his seemingly dreamlike state hinders his ability to make accurate judgements, comprehend his situation, and decide how to best get out of his ever-changing torturous environment. Through the narrator’s almost hopeless states of madness and his shimmering rays of hope and decision making, the reader feels compelled to understand how the narrator got into this pit and how he would ever be able to be free given that his tormentors are ever vigilant and always prepared to bring a new device to try to end the narrator’s life.
When the “narrator discusses how the unconscious mind provides a glimpse into the gulf beyond,” this shows how Poe can try to explain how the imagination can work, and how it can interact with rational thought processes of...
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... reader much to fill in thus helping to create great suspense and harboring many questions about the Inquisition and the darkness within the minds of man.
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Edgar Allan Poe, an often misinterpreted literary mastermind, known predominantly by his extraordinary tales of horror, forbidden love, madness, and mystery, is more than meets the eye. Though his genres of expertise may indicate otherwise, Poe was a very social person, a gentleman by trade, and he possessed more hands-on military experience than any other major American author in history. As a writer, Poe gained a great deal of his inspiration from his surroundings. His enlistment in the army contributed significantly to his repertoire, and inspired some of his greatest works, including “’The Gold Bug;’ ’The Man Who Was Used Up,’ a satire of southern frontier politics; ‘The Balloon Hoax,’ set along the mid-Atlantic Carolinas coast; ‘The Oblong Box,’ involving a voyage out of Charleston harbor; [and] ‘The Cask of Amontillado,’ possibly based on a Fort Independence/Castle Island Legend”(Beidler, Soldier 342). The death of his mother and his unfortunate love life played another major role in his authoring, giving him the ability to write about “. . . the intense symbiosis between love and hatred . . . [illustrating that] love is seldom as simple or as happy as popularly hoped” (Hoffman 81). Poe’s chilling tales remain popular today, and have a long history of providing inspiration for major books and other cultural staples of entertainment.
Poe’s themes in his poems and short stories reveal a Gothic look on the world that includes morbid imagery that some people would not be comfortable with reading. In The Pit and the Pendulum, the narrator has to make a drastic decision that not most would have to make: the choice of how to die. Although, the true horror of The Pit and the Pendulum is not just a matter of the choice of death, I believe it is also in the horror of no matter the result, he will die either way. Death in this situation is unavoidable and creates a strain in the human subconscious because of the natural human instinct to want to live. Burduck in his book Grim Phantasms: Fear in Poe’s Short Fiction writes that “of all the emotions by and affecting the mind, feat most intrigued Poe” (5). Poe’s use of fear is seen throughout many of his works and The Pit and the Pendulum is a prime example of this. The narrator in the story is put into an underground dungeon that he cannot get out of. The darkness encompassing him brings a “fearful idea” to his mind and in the dark waves his arms widely about in all dire...
In this complete darkness the main character has no idea where he is. Could it be a tomb, or is he in prison waiting to be hanged? The unknown narrator shows fear by the opening of story when he states, “I was sick unto death, with that long agony, and when they at length bound me, and I was permitted to sit, I felt that my senses were leaving me.” (Poe 1.) He felt this way every time he would take a drink of what little water was left for him. He would drink it, fall asleep and wake up somewhere else. When he feels the walls are beginning to close in on him and he is going to fall into a pit, he realizes the water he has been drinking is drugged. It is when he stands up he realizes he is in a dark cell with a deep pit in the middle. At the bottom of the pit is water. “And then there stole into my fancy, like a rich musical note, the thought of what sweet rest there must be in grave.” (Poe 2.) The character begins to think why am I here? Am I going to die here not knowing why? No one gave him a reason why he was taken and put in a dark cell. He knew it was the Spanish Inquisition but as far as he was concerned, he ...
When a child is born, he or she does not see the same things an adult sees. The baby does not understand language and cannot make the distinction between races or gender or good and evil. While it is impossible to go back in time, novels allow readers to take on a new set of eyes for a few hours or days. They give a new perspective to the world, and sometimes provide a filter to the things seen in the world. Unreliable narrators give authors the flexibility to lie to and withhold information from readers, providing new perspectives into the narrator as well as the other characters of the novel. Authors use unreliable narrators not to give more information to the reader, but to withhold information in order to further character development.
The short story is generally a study in human terror. Furthermore, the author explains Poe use of a particular style and technique, to not only create the mood of mystery, but to cause the reader to feel sympathy for the narrator. Poe makes a connection between the storyteller and reader with knowledge and literary craftsmanship.
Fisher, Benjamin F. The Cambridge Introduction to Edgar Allan Poe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Print.
Silverman, Kenneth. Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-Ending Remembrance. New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 1991. book.
Magistrale, Tony. "The Art of Poetry." Student Companion to Edgar Allan Poe. Westport, Conn. ;London: Greenwood, 2001. 39-41. Print.