The Pit and the Pendulum
Expository Essay
Edgar Allan Poe, the writer in The Pit and the Pendulum consistently uses detailed rhetoric description to convey the narrator’s experience of unrelieved torture and suspense by using sensory words, phrases, and images. The narrator wants the readers to feel what he feels – fear, terror, horror, despair and ultimate hope. The story, “The Pit and the Pendulum” therefore intends to invoke a feeling of atmospheric dark anticipatory horror, death anxiety and eventual hope to its readers. This is achieved by the sequential tracking of the anonymous narrator’s thoughts and experiences throughout the story.
The narrator begins with his trial before seven Spanish judges. From the onset; “he is sick – sick unto death”! As he is being sentenced to death, he becomes very aware and obsessed by horror from the “monkish tortures”[1] experienced by the Inquisition’s victims before him. Soon after, he swoons and awakens in total darkness – “the blackness of eternal night”. He suffers moments of immense suspense where he questions if he is dead but mentally conscious. He has heard of the dungeons’ horrors and can only anticipate the method and time of his executions. The narrator expresses his anxiety and despair by trying to investigate his surrounding but only ends up in the agony of a hard fall and a realisation of a near-miss to a horrible death down a pit at the middle of the room. He passes out.
Arousing from his unconsciousness, the narrator paints a very terrifying situation where he finds himself bound like an animal with a huge razor-sharp pendulum swinging above his body. This frightening situation is intensified when he realises that the pendulum is time controlled to eventually descend slowly and slice him through his heart into two. He is immensely horrified and transfers to the readers the feeling of hell, anguish and “doom prepared for [him] by monkish ingenuity in torture”[2]. But out of hope, he frantically attempts to free his shackles by having rats gnaw all over his body. Although despairing to the disgust, the narrator is able break free just in the nick of time and escapes from the crushing blade.
The traumatising ordeal is not yet over as he comes to a realisation that he is being watched by his tormentors. The dungeon walls begin to heat up and become gradually hotter. He is extremely horrified by the glowing faces on the walls as they move towards him occasioned by the walls closing on him. This is quite torturous to him mentally. The narrator leaves the readers picturing themselves in the same situation by presenting a choice of death, either by heat or the pit! He momentarily considers ending his agony by jumping into the pit. However reason and hope prevails – “Any death but that of the pit”2 he said unto himself. Just as he is forced at the edge of the horrible pit with all optimism lost, he lets out a horror-stricken scream and suddenly victory trumpets blast out, the walls roll back and he is rescued from his torturers.
The Pit and the Pendulum is characterized by the strong resolve from the condemned narrator who is given a choice of death by plunging in a horrible bottomless pit, be sliced into half by the sharp swinging pendulum, be crushed up by the very hot iron walls closing on him or finally jump into the pit to end his torment. The emphasis of the story is on the undiminishing suffering and torture imposed upon the narrator. He splendidly manages to transfer the effects of horror and mental torture through his horrific experiences and hellacious personal choice of death to the readers. In the end the narrator is incomprehensibly saved from his demise thus giving the readers a gracious sense of hope.
Bibliography
Poe, Edgar. The Pit and the Pendulum: The Gift: A Christmas and New Year’s Present for 1843. United States: Carey & Hart, 1842.
[1] Poe, Edgar. The Pit and the Pendulum: The Gift: A Christmas and New Year’s Present for 1843. United States: Carey & Hart, 1842.
[2] Poe, Edgar. The Pit and the Pendulum: The Gift: A Christmas and New Year’s Present for 1843. United States: Carey & Hart, 1842.
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