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Edgar allen poes the pit and the pendulum essay
Edgar allen poe writing
What did poe fear in pit and pendulum
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The Dungeon of Madness 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 setting plays an important role in how the narrator discovers the many ways he may die” (2). It is a dungeon full of torturing traps, and the character, as any normal human, feels terror inside his prison and fears his death in any of the cruel ways arranged for him. Still, he has to decide between death and the relief which it brings or life with the interminable agony of being tortured as a lab mouse. The best terror stories create suspense through the setting. Most of the times, the character does not know completely where he is or what enemy or problem he is facing. In “The Pit and the Pendulum”, the underground prison is dark; as a result, the character compares the place with hell or even his tomb. That is why at the beginning, during his dream-like state, he does not want to open his eyes and we do not know where he is either. The darkness makes the character struggle with the idea of trusting his senses or not. Also, he is afraid to discover more mean ways in which he may die. Poe creates a disgusting atmosphere for the setting. He starts describing the prison as a "damp and hard place." There is no light and the character is not able to s...
The reasoning behind this, would most likely be approved of by Poe, because the longer you stayed alive the more they gained your morals and will to live. Other than that Poe wanted it pitch black, total darkness. Even though it would be hard to film complete dark, they could have emphasized the sound effects. To make the audience guess what it could possibly be, and hope it’s not what they expect it to be. The movie overall could have had less movement or life and more of a dreary development.
Poe continues to develop his point that no one escapes death through the setting. Not only does he use the exterior and how it was constructed to tell what precautions P...
One prospect to consider is, once again, the pendulum. Although it is debatable whether or not this medieval torture device is entirely supernatural, it definitely has a mysterious aura to it. For example, the reader never discovers whether it is manually operated, or swings by itself, and also if anyone is supervising the entire experience. It is also unclear if the narrator would have actually been killed, or if the pendulum would have perhaps stopped right before cutting him. The last instance in which there are strange circumstances in this book would be the pit. This unusual feature was probably the most bizarre part of the whole story, as there are many aspects of it which are never explained. One instance of this would be its entire purpose. There could be many reasons it is there, like for the narrator to accidentally fall into, or to relieve him of his misery, or merely just to torture him. The pit is possibly the only supernatural part of the whole story, because at the very end, the walls suddenly start to push the narrator inwards, towards the pit. Although it could have been caused by machines, it is very unlikely considering the technology that was available at the time. The moving of the walls creates a dangerous effect, and the reader begins to lose all hope of the survival of the narrator. But then he is saved at the last second, and the reader is relieved. It is in all of these ways that “The Pit and the Pendulum” by Edgar Allan Poe is a true horror
The writing style of Edgar Allan Poe shows the writer to be of a dark nature. In this story, he focuses on his fascination of being buried alive. He quotes, “To be buried alive is, beyond question, the most terrific of these [ghastly] extremes which has ever fallen to the lot of mere mortality.” page 58 paragraph 3. The dark nature is reflected in this quote, showing the supernatural side of Poe which is reflected in his writing and is also a characteristic of Romanticism. Poe uses much detail, as shown in this passage, “The face assumed the usual pinched and sunken outline. The lips were of the usual marble pallor. The eyes were lusterless. There was no warmth. Pulsation had ceased. For three days the body was preserved unburied, during which it had acquired a stony rigidity.” page 59 paragraph 2. The descriptive nature of this writing paints a vivid picture that intrigues the reader to use their imagination and visualize the scene presented in the text. This use of imagery ties with aspects of Romanticism because of the nature of the descriptions Poe uses. Describing the physical features of one who seems dead is a horrifying perspective as not many people thing about the aspects of death.
In “The Beast In The Cave”, H.P. Lovecraft develops a suspenseful plot in order to build tension throughout the story that inevitably leaves the reader feeling disturbed and the story hanging. The plot itself is seems simple, but is complicated at the same time. Victoria Nelson talks about how Lovecraft’s stories tease the reader “with the tantalizing prospect of utter loss of control, of possession or engulfment, while remaining at the same time safely contained within the girdle of a formalized, almost ritualized narrative”. With “The Beast In The Cave”, the protagonist faces only one conflict throughout the story making it a simple plot line; however, the predicament he is in provides the complexity and tension that Lovecraft creates in other stories as well.
Both authors make a point of showing the narrow-mindedness of humans by nature. In “Allegory of the Cave”, the prisoners believed that the shadows they were seeing were reality, with nothing more to it. The comfort of the said perceived, and therefore the fear of the unrecognized outside world would end in the prisoner being forced to climb the steep ascent of the cave and step outside int...
...scarlet stained windows, the images are “ghastly in the extreme” (Poe 517). Normally, a room would not be decorated in a way that everyone is to frightened to enter. Therefore, the fear of the space mimics man’s fear of death. Poe’s life had been shaped by death and perhaps this influenced his writing. His mother had passed away when he was just three years old. His foster mother also passed away, after a long illness. Then, Poe’s wife passed away from illness. These occurrences in his life may have taught him that time is precious and life is not everlasting. No matter how hard a man tries to ignore death, we will all die eventually. Tragically, Poe himself died under mysterious circumstances just as he was turning his life around and becoming successful. The way Poe set the story and the symbolism used throughout clearly drove home the point that life is fleeting.
Poe begins setting the tone of the story by describing the gloomy and threatening vaults beneath Montressor’s home. The first description of the Montressor home, as well as the reader’s first hint that something is amiss, is the description of the time off Montressor had required his employees to take. This alone lets us know that some of his intentions are less than virtuous. He describes the vaults as extensive, having many rooms, and being insufferably damp. This description of Montressor’s vaults strikes a feeling of uneasiness and fear in the reader, as well as a fear of malevolent things to come. References to the bodies laid to rest in the ca...
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 ...
"The boundaries which divide Life and Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where one ends, and where the other begins?" Edgar Allan Poe, The Premature Burial (Bartlett, 642). To venture into the world of Edgar Allan Poe is to embark on a journey to a land filled with perversities of the mind, soul, and body. The joyless existence carved out by his writings is one of lost love, mental anguish, and the premature withering of his subjects. Poe wrote in a style that characterized the sufferings he endured throughout in his pitiful life. From the death of his parents while he was still a child, to the repeated frailty of his love life, to the neuroses of his later years, his life was a ceaseless continuum of one mind-warping tragedy after another.
Edgar Allan Poe is a popular all around the world. He is seen as a dark, mysterious writer. Looking into his life experiences, it explains why his stories are so dark. Readers who do not know his background stories may think he is a crazy, mentally unstable man. But to really understand the depth of Edgar Allan Poe’s stories, it is important and useful to look into the reasoning of why the stories are so dark.
Poe loves to write about darker, morbid things that make the reader judge the protagonist’s actions, yet pity him for doing such a thi...
In Poe’s short story, The Pit and The Pendulum, the main character, our narrator, has been captured and is certain that he will die. The story unfolds as he awakens after having lost consciousness. In order to understand him and comprehend the type of man he is, we must make inferences from his thoughts and actions.
In the story, The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe, the author tries to create a specific atmosphere to emphasize the action within the story. The setting of the story immensely helps to create this atmosphere. Poe’s descriptive setting aids in creating the atmosphere of the story by developing mood, evoking feelings from the reader, and creating a false sense of security.
The main theme of the poem is death. Edgar Allan Poe likes to play with this theme in his works: He describes it from the psychological point of view and deals with every aspect of it. The author uses personification in order to show us Death as an actual character who rules in the lost city: “Lo! Death has reared himself a throne In a strange city lying alone far down within the dim West, Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best Have gone to their eternal rest.” These lines depict Death's domination over life: The setting of the sun, the location of the city and its stillness, the “eternal rest” of everything that used to be meaningful and magnificent, the way in which Death “looks gigantically down” upon his possessions, and the fact that the city is “slightly sinking”. The poem provides us with so called mental pabulum and awakes the eternal question of the rightness of our chasing-the-prosperity lifestyles. Death is inevitable and he will rule over everyone eventually. And the last lines of the poem: “Hell, rising from a thousand thrones, Shall do it reve...