Reflection: The Pit & The Pendulum

Edgar Allan Poe's The Pit and the Pendulum is set during the Spanish Inquisition. It is important to know the background of this time period to understand what is happening in the story. The Spanish government was Roman Catholic and would punish those blamed for heresy without any true evidence. Punishment led to death most of the time. The government was very uncontrolled yet brutal with its citizens. The narrator of the story, whose name readers never learn, had a very interesting way of describing the judges of the Spanish government, their lips in particular. He said, "They appeared to me white and thin even to grotesqueness; thin with the intensity of their expression of firmness-- of immovable resolution-- of stern contempt of human torture" (Poe 263). The narrator is able to realize the horrendous things that are taking place in his country, and finds the cause as being the darkness in the judges's hearts. Just by getting a better understanding of the judges's character, the narrator learned what his future was before they even told him (Poe 266). He is eventually accused and sent to jail. During the toughest of times in his cell, the narrator even considered suicide. "In other conditions of mind, I might of had courage to end my misery at once by a plunge into one of these abysses" (Poe 268). In order to exaggerate the journey taking place, Poe incorporated suspense and major descriptions of fear into the story. These details also bring drama and scary ideas to the story, categorizing it as a dark romanticism piece. It's obvious how paranoid the man is feeling, and longer his holding lasts, the more self control he seems to lose. The narrator is never shy to share his true feelings about his future. He claims, "The agony of defense grew at length tolerable, and I cautiously moved forward, with my arms extended, and my eyes straining sockets, in the hope of catching some faint ray of light" (Poe 265-266). The greater part of the story is the narrator awaiting his destiny. Therefore, his emotions and struggles are discussed throughout most of the plot. At one point, he sights a pendulum in his cell (Poe 269). The narrator goes into great detail of the pendulum and its motions. His cell is also accumulated with rats at one point, which just adds to the grotesqueness of his situation. After all of the tests that the narrator endures in his cell, he comes to a final belief. "The Inquisitorial vengeance had been hurried by my two-fold escape, and there was to be no more dallying with the King of Terrors" (Poe 273). The mystery and suspense of The Pit and the Pendulum is a great way to add darkness to what one Fact on File Analysis describes as Romanticism, "a belief in the power of the imagination, a celebration of nature, and a fascination with the supernatural and the exotic" (Stade).

Poe, Edgar Allan. "The Pit and The Pendulum." Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Ph.D. and Douglas Fisher, Ph.D. Glencoe Literature. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009. 262-273. Print.

Stade, George, and Karen Karbiener. "Romanticism." Encyclopedia of British Writers, 1800 to the Present, Second Edition. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2009. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc.