literary analysis essay of the pit and the pendulum

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Home › Literature › Analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Pit and the Pendulum

Analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Pit and the Pendulum

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on June 8, 2021

“The Pit and the Pendulum” first appeared in Edgar Allan Poe ’s collection of short stories The Gift in 1843. The story is a terrifying tale of suspense in which Poe captures the horrors of confinement and torture. The main character, a prisoner condemned to death by the Inquisition in Spain, awakens to find himself in a chamber of utter darkness. His first impression is that he has been buried alive. Once the prisoner discovers that he is not in a tomb, he proceeds to grope his way around the dungeon to discover his surroundings. His disorientation is perplexing. In groping his way around, the prisoner nearly falls into a deep, rat-infested pit. He then blacks out again, and upon awakening he discovers that he has been tied down. It is not long before he perceives an ominous, razor-edged pendulum swinging back and forth above his body, slowly descending toward his chest. Seconds before he is severed in half, rats chew through his ropes and the prisoner narrowly escapes death.

Still, the prisoner’s torment continues. The hot iron walls of his dungeon begin to close in, forcing him ever closer to the frightening pit. It is here that the carefully crafted, frightening, and suspenseful tale falls fl at. In an abrupt and contrived ending, while the prisoner stands on the edge of the dreadful pit, the French army storms Toledo and rescues him from the murderous hands of the Inquisition. Although the ending is anticlimatic, the tale demonstrates Poe’s unparalleled ability to create nightmarish scenes of horror. Themes of confinement and torture, along with the psychological exploration of repression and emotional fragility, characterize a number of Poe’s other famous stories, particularly “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The Cask of Amontillado.”

Literary Criticism of Edgar Allan Poe

Analysis of Edgar Allan Poe’s Stories

BIBLIOGRAPHY Hammond, J. R. An Edgar Allan Poe Companion. Totowa, N.J.: Barnes & Noble, 1981. Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Pit and the Pendulum.” In The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1992.

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The Pit and the Pendulum

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Analysis: “The Pit and the Pendulum”

“The Pit and the Pendulum” is famous for its excruciatingly vivid description of pure dread. Almost nothing actually happens to the narrator in this dungeon—it almost happens, and that’s precisely where the horror lies.

The worst thing in the world, Poe suggests, isn’t to die, but to fear death and the suffering that might attend death. Or perhaps more subtly, it’s to fear that fear, to experience fear feeding on itself. The narrator of this story makes it clear that fear is utterly absorbing, destabilizing, and even dehumanizing. It can undo a person to the extent that they long for death. If that’s true, one hardly needs an Inquisitorial dungeon to go through some of the world’s worst tortures: One’s own mind can do the job perfectly well on its own.

It’s possible to read this entire story as a kind of dream-vision. The long passage about dreams and unconsciousness early on in the story makes poetic and even optimistic claims for the unconscious, arguing that a close connection with the unconscious mind is the precursor of art, and the purview of only a chosen few.

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Poe's Short Stories

By edgar allan poe, poe's short stories summary and analysis of the pit and the pendulum.

The story begins with the narrator receiving a death sentence from the court of the Inquisition for an unknown crime. He describes the implacable horror of the judges as they announce their decrees, although the narrator himself is too overwhelmed with fear to understand their words and falls into a faint while longing for death. He awakens in darkness, wondering how much of what he remembers was a dream and how much was reality. At first, he swings between terror and confusion, but he then tries to remember the events of the past few days before opening his eyes. Realizing that he is unbound and in a dark dungeon, he reasons that he must not have been at an auto-da-fe, the typical manner of execution for those who ran afoul of the Inquisition. Instead of the public prayer and ceremonies that would have led to an auto-da-fe execution, he has been probably been placed in one of the dungeons of Toledo, a place known for particularly cruel tortures and punishments.

Fearful, the narrator again faints, and after he awakes for the second time, he begins to explore the dungeon while wondering what his fate will be. He discovers a stone wall and tears off a rag from his robe in order to mark a starting point so that he will know when he has circumnavigated the room. However, he trips, falls, and is overtaken by sleep before making a full circuit, and upon waking, he finds that someone has given him a loaf of bread and a pitcher of water. He finishes the circuit and, having counted his steps, he estimates the circumference of the cell to be about fifty yards, although he is unable to ascertain the shape of the prison. The narrator then decides to cross the center of the room, moving with increasing confidence until he fortuitously trips and lands prone at the edge of a circular pit. By dropping a stone from the masonry at the edge of the pit, he discovers that the pit is very deep and filled with water at the bottom. He hears a door closing and realizes that he has narrowly escaped his death.

The narrator's experience with the surprise of the pit is exactly in line with the horror stories he has heard of the Inquisition's punishments, and he decides that he would rather wait for death at the edge of the pit than risk the fall, deciding that the Inquisitors would not allow jumping into the pit to lead to an instantaneous death. Increasingly terrified, he remains awake for a long time but eventually falls asleep and wakes to again find bread and water by his side. However, the water is drugged, so he again falls asleep and wakes up to find himself in a slightly different situation. He can now see the cell by a sulfurous light and observes that the circumference of the room is only half what he estimated, since he must have nearly circumnavigated the dungeon before falling asleep and then accidentally backtracked the entire circuit after waking up. He also sees that the room is actually square, that the floor is made of the stone, and that the walls are made of large plates of metal and decorated with frightening figures. He can also see the circular pit in the center of the room.

The narrator observes his surroundings from the position to which he was moved while in his drugged sleep. He is securely bound on his back by a long strap that has been wound around his body and attaches him to a wooden framework so that he can only move his head and, to a lesser extent, his left arm, which he is able to use to take food from a nearby dish. However, he has not been provided with water, and the food has been heavily seasoned in order to produce the sensation of needing water. The ceiling, meanwhile, is thirty to forty feet above his head and plated with metal. One of the plates features a typical painting of the figure of Time, although Time appears to be holding an image of a pendulum rather than the more commonly associated scythe.

After a moment, the narrator notices that the pendulum is actually not an image and is in fact a pendulum sweeping slowly from side to side over a small trajectory. Confused, he observes it for several minutes but eventually turns his attention to the large rats that have been released into the dungeon. For some thirty or sixty minutes, he concentrates on scaring the rats away from his food, but when he again looks at the ceiling, he sees that the arc of the pendulum's swing is about a yard larger, that the pendulum is swinging faster, and that, most importantly, the pendulum has visually descended. The pendulum, he now sees, has a razor-like edge of steel and is attached to the ceiling by a brass rod. The narrator concludes to his horror that because he has managed to avoid their preferred form of punishment in the form of the surprise pit, his torturers have decided to find an alternative.

For an interminable period of time, the narrator watches the pendulum gradually swinging closer and closer to his body. At first, he prays for a swifter descent and, losing mental control, struggles to force himself closer to the blade, but then he suddenly calms down and smiles at the pendulum. Finally, he again faints; the narrator guesses that because the position of the pendulum had not noticeably changed, it must not have been an extended faint, but he also conjectures that had it been a long faint, his captors - who are clearly observing him closely - could have stopped the descent of the blade. He eats the remainder of the rat-plundered food and for a brief moment feels hopeful. On the edge of madness, he tries to hold on to the sensation of hope while observing that the blade was designed to cut horizontally across his heart. As the blade swings closer, he waits in a frenzied anguish for the blade to begin fraying his robes and vainly struggles to free his arm.

As his mental tension increases, he struggles between hope and despair, losing briefly to despair as he thinks about the tangled strap that restrains him. Nevertheless, he manages to pull his thoughts together for long enough to find a potential solution. He spreads the remains of the oil and spice from his food onto the strap and lies still so that the hungry rats swarm his body in order to eat away at the strap. By the time the rats free him from his bindings, the pendulum has already begun to slice at the robes above his chest, but he is able to break free away from the blade. As soon as he does, the pendulum is retracted to the top of the ceiling, proving to the narrator the closeness with which he is watched. He realizes quickly that something has changed in his prison and finds the source of the cell's light at a fissure at the base of the walls. An outside fire is heating his chamber, and the narrator rushes to the edge of the pit, weighing the cool water of the pit against the growing heat of the prison cell. He leaves the edge in a fit of tears.

The cell heats up further and begins to flatten into a narrowing diamond so that the narrator will eventually be forced into the pit. The narrator clings to the heated walls but is ultimately forced to the brink of the pit and screams in despair. As he is about to fall in, however, he hears voices and trumpets as the walls return suddenly to their normal shape. Having just led the French army into Toledo and beaten back the forces of the Inquisition, General Lasalle rushes in and catches the fainting narrator by the arm before he falls into the pit. The ordeal is over.

One notable aspect of Edgar Allan Poe 's prose is his consistent use of detailed description, and he uses this tendency to great effect in his short story "The Pit and the Pendulum." The aim of the story is very simply to create a dark atmosphere of foreboding and anticipatory horror, and Poe achieves this by minutely tracking the path of the unnamed narrator's thoughts and experiences. Although the narrator is, like most of Poe's first-person protagonists, somewhat unreliable in nature, his unreliability is circumstantial, stemming from his fear and physical weakness rather than from guilt or inherent madness. However, because the narrator is very much aware of his unreliability and emphasizes it to us in a way that the narrator of "The Tell-Tale Heart" would not, he paradoxically gives us the sense that he is not trying to deceive. The sense of emotional honesty conveyed by the narrator leads to a sense of increased immediacy in the story and intensity of the mood.

Despite the lurid descriptions and the account of a relatively reliable narrator, Poe excludes certain details that heighten the suspense of the story. Just as he carefully tracks the psychological wanderings of the narrator, the author does not describe the wrongdoing of the narrator or the details of his arrest and later of his salvation. This omission of the facts has two major effects on the reader. First, it leads us to identify strongly with the narrator's confusion and fear of the unknown. One of the main sources of the protagonist's terror is that he either knows nothing about what will happen to him or knows the exact nature of his fate but cannot do anything with his knowledge. Poe exploits the theme of the fear of the unknown by connecting it to the fear of the dark at the beginning of the narrator's ordeal and to the fear of being helpless, as in the latter half of the story.

The second effect of our lack of information concerning the narrator's trial and sentencing is that we cannot ascertain his level of guilt or innocence. Part of the effect of the story is dependent on an assumption of the prisoner's relative innocence, particularly in the context of the cruelty of the Inquisition. The narrator's rescue from the Spanish Inquisitors by the French General Lasalle at the end of the story suggests that he may be a political victim driven to his doom as a result of worldly conflicts rather than sin, particularly since he was saved by the general himself rather than by a lesser soldier. In addition, the protagonist's oversensitivity and tendency towards introspection contribute to making him a sympathetic victim rather than a deserving prisoner.

Completing the atmosphere of terror in "The Pit and the Pendulum" is the use of nightmarish imagery. At the beginning of the tale, the narrator describes the "seven tall candles" that at first remind him of angels but then turn into "meaningless spectres, with heads of flame." We are reminded of a passage in the Book of Revelation, where seven candlesticks surround someone who resembles Jesus but who has flames in his eyes. Poe's Biblical allusion to the Apocalypse is related to the protagonist's constant sense of impending doom, as he is left with fewer and fewer choices other than death.

The most curious aspect of "The Pit and the Pendulum" - an aspect that sets this story apart from most of Poe's writings - is that the prisoner is abruptly and inexplicably saved from doom in the last paragraph, which is in line with the narrator's focus on hope. His punishment by the Inquisition is as much about mental torture as it is about physical discomfort, and accordingly, the narrator swings back and forth between hope and despair as well as sanity and insanity. Despite his frequent fainting fits, he is able to maintain enough of a grip on his mental facilities to survive the peril of the falling pendulum. However, by the time the walls begin to close in on him, he appears to be rapidly losing the battle for his sanity. Ultimately, his survival is not dependent on his own faculties, but it justifies the hope that characterizes his fight to stay alive throughout the ordeal.

Poe’s Short Stories Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Poe’s Short Stories is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

In which city is the story The Purloined Letter set?

The Purloined Letter is set in Paris, France.

The Pit and the Pendulum

"Which quotation" means that you have been provided with answer choices for your question. Please include all information in your posts.

How might the story, The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar, be an example of science fiction?

Edgar Allan Poe is viewed as one of the forerunners of science fiction, and "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" includes a number of elements that would later be developed in the science fiction genre. The narrator views his experience with M....

Study Guide for Poe’s Short Stories

Poe's Short Stories study guide contains a biography of Edgar Poe, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About Poe's Short Stories
• Poe's Short Stories Summary
• The Tell-Tale Heart Video
• Character List

Essays for Poe’s Short Stories

Poe's Short Stories literature essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Poe's Short Stories.

• Poe's Pointers for Perfection
• Women in Transit
• Death and Creation in Poe's "Ligeia"
• Edgar Allan Poe's "Tales of Terror" as Tragic Drama
• The Man of the Crowd

Lesson Plan for Poe’s Short Stories

• About the Author
• Study Objectives
• Common Core Standards
• Introduction to Poe's Short Stories
• Relationship to Other Books
• Bringing in Technology
• Notes to the Teacher
• Related Links
• Poe's Short Stories Bibliography

E-Text of Poe’s Short Stories

Poe's Short Stories E-Text contains the full text of Poe's Short Stories

• The Unparalleled Adventures of One Hans Pfall
• The Gold Bug
• Four Beasts in One
• The Murders in the Rue Morgue
• The Mystery of Marie Rogêt (*1) - A Sequel to "The Murders in the Rue Morgue"

Wikipedia Entries for Poe’s Short Stories

• Introduction

The Pit and the Pendulum - Study Guide

The Pit and the Pendulum (1832) is one of Edgar Allan Poe 's best known gothic tales, offering plenty of literary allusions and a particularly graphic narrative. We hope this study guide is useful for teachers and students to more fully appreciate the story.

Read the story: The Pit and the Pendulum , Character Analysis & Plot Summary , Genre & Themes , Symbolism , Epigraph & Vocabulary , Inaccurate Historical Context , Quotes , Discussion Questions , Paired Readings , Useful Links , and Notes/Teacher Comments

Character Analysis & Plot Summary

Unnamed Prisoner - The narrator is condemned to death by sinister judges, supposedly during the Spanish Inquisition, who incarcerate him in a hellish prison cell, where he experiences terror after terror.

Judges - The seven judges who condemn the prisoner to torture and death.

General Lasalle - Napoleon's general who rescues the Inquisition prisoner from his torturers just in the nick of time.

The Rats - The unlikely heroes of the story, who chew the prisoner's bindings loose so he can escape the descending pendulum before it slices him to death.

The Cell - OK, the prison cell isn't a character per se, but it is a mysterious, transformative (and shrinking) torture chamber that makes for an interesting dynamic in the story. Nevermind the most terrifying feature, a glowing pit of fire.

Plot Summary

The story is about the elevated terrors experienced by an unnamed prisoner in a torture chamber, sentenced to death by sinister judges of the Spanish Inquisition. In complete darkness, he tries to measure the slimy cell's dimensions with a torn section of his robe, sees a mural of Father Time and a knife-edged pendulum from the ceiling that gradually descends to his seemingly certain death. He's completely bound to a wooden board, except for his left elbow to hand, enough to drink a beverage and eat, before scattering the rancid meat on the straps to entice rats to gnaw his way to freedom, just as the pendulum makes body contact. The walls become red-hot, the room shrinks him so he has nowhere to go but the molten pit of iron, when all of a sudden trumpets sound and the French Army, General Lasalle at the helm, rescues him from the evil Inquisition prison. Happy ending? As good as can be expected in Poe's sensory horror thriller-- or is it all a hallucination tripped by mental illness?

Genre & Themes

Poe's story is in the darkest reaches of Dark Romanticism , in the genre of Gothic Literature due to its focus on pure terror, utter despair, and physical torture. Poe brilliantly applied his personal experience suffering from mental illness to his canon of works, so readers become emersed in his senses of madness, obsession with death, and the supernatural. His gift for writing about his own pain-- both physical and metaphysical-- keeps his readers coming back for more.

Physical torture : Unlike many of Poe's stories, The Pit and the Pendulum focuses on physical terror and torturing of the senses, much more so than the supernatural or psychological horror, for which he is revered as a master.

Religious persecution (Spanish Inquisition) vs. Political persecution (French Revolution) : Both time periods in history are references, because Poe wants us to remember that persecution can be for many reasons. Maybe that's why he doesn't clearly define the reason for the sentence. Perhaps it's the mental persecution in the prisoner's head that's the real story?

Literary Elements

Obsession with Sound : Poe employs the art of vivid physical and sensory descriptions to keep his readers on the edge of our seats reading this story. We can feel the texture of the floor and ground while crawling around the perimeter of the cell with him, feel the panic of the descending, hissing pendulum, his forced utter stillness and the sound of the gnawing rats loosening the rancid meat-scented straps, the horror at discovering what's contained in the pit, the shrinking molten-hot torture chamber, and " my soul found vent in one loud, long, and final scream of despair ." We feel, see, smell, and particularly hear as he does... and it never stops... until we hear the rescuing trumpets!

Symbols : Poe uses a number of symbols and allusions, see next section

ALL CAPS : Poe's demonstrative technique of highlighting key words for us in all capital letters is very effective. Comparable to screaming, the affect is a heightened sense of OUR senses along with the prisoner's!

The following are in their order of appearance in the story. See what you make of them:

Rats represent hope and the potential for freedom when all hope seemed lost. The prisoner saw their potential; the vermin were transformed from assailants of terror to abetting agents of his escape.

Candles : Represent the judges and time; they turned from symbols of angels to "meaningless spectres" that will burn down as does any hope of escape or survival from the torture chamber.

Pendulum : The torture device designed to slowly descend until it kills its victim represents Time (Poe's mention of the Father Time mural on the ceiling makes this easy), and also capitulation, or mood "swings"-- from hope to hopelessness which "vibrate" his feelings of terror. He personifies the device making a "hissing" noise, synonymous with his human torturers. Finally, a pendulum is very similar to a guillotine in its design and function where gravity does the killing in both cases.

Pit : Could be a symbol of Hell, the greatest torture of all to be burned in a molten pit of iron. The prisoner mistakes the pit for a well at first (cool), only to discover "it burned itself in upon my shuddering reason."

Spanish Inquisition & judges : Could his persecution be a symbol of the narrator's mental illness? Indeed, the morphing torture chamber, being sentence on unknown charges, the inaccurate historical account, could be Poe's way of expressing the whole story is the struggle, fear, and valiant effort to break free of mental illness. This point is a reach, but we'll throw it out there for you to ponder.

Epigraph & Vocabulary

The epigraph sets the tone.

What's the opening quote called? First, let's rule-out an "epigram" which is a concise, short, clever saying, which this is not; neither witty nor concise. The difference between an "epitaph" and "epigraph": Both are profound quotes, poems or statements, the difference relates to where they appear. An "epitaph" is inscribed on a tombstone or plaque; an "epigraph" appears at the opening of a literary composition. In this case, the Latin phrase at the beginning of the story is an epigraph , because even though Poe claimed it would be engraved on the gates of the Jacobin Club (see "Inaccurate Historical Context" section for more), it never was (if it had been, that would make it an "epitaph"). Now, onto its meaning.

Poe chooses to write the epigraph in Latin, which was common for works of literature from the Renaissance through the 19th century. His intent may have been to convince his readers the story was set during the Spanish Inquisition, even though it was at least three centuries later (see the section below: "Inaccurate Historical Context").

Translation:

The "unholy mob of torturers" refers to the radicalized French Jacobin Club, which led the Revolutionary government named "The Reign of Terror." Foes of both the Church and atheists, they persecuted their enemies by guillotine, and were eventually defeated by unified republicanism in France. We can assume the "funeral cave" refers to their persecution, and that prisoners were finally freed after they were subdued ("life and health appear"). While the epigraph seems to provide a "CliffsNotes" of the story, Poe intentionally keeps the specifics of the prisoner's charges, conviction, and reason for torture from the reader.

Interesting Vocabulary

surcingle : A side strap, usually referring to what would run under the belly of a horse to keep a blanket in place. In this case, the straps are used to render the prisoner immobile on the board

scimitar : a short word with a curved blade, Poe compares the swinging pendulum to a scimitar

a fit of the ague : malaria or some other illness with symptoms of fever and shivering

insuperable : two meanings that imply hopeless and hopeful at the same time: 1) impossible to overcome, or 2) incapable of being defeated

Inaccurate Historical Context

The story's historical references of torture span three centuries and two countries, which Poe mixes together for great dramatic affect. Poe expertly employs the technique of The Unreliable Narrator .

The Spanish Inquisition began in 1470s in Spain and its territories to enforce conversion to Catholicism, brutal torture to those who did not obey. Some 150,000 people were charged, 3,000 - 5,000 were believed to be executed. Literary references may have exaggerated the extent of the torture, which makes it an effective reference in this story.

Toledo : Poe references his location as Toledo, (example at end: "The French army had entered Toledo.") This was an infamous Spanish Inquisition prison of torture.

The Jacobin Club assumed power in the 1790s after the French monarchy fell during the Revolution, they became more radical and executed their enemies by guillotine, referred to as "The Reign of Terror." Note: Poe's reference to the "unholy mob of torturers" in the epigraph was to oppressors of The Jacobin Club, not the Spanish Inquisition judges (see "Epigraph & Vocabulary" section above).

General Lasalle who came to the prisoner's rescue with French calvary and trumpets sounding, served under Napoleon in the Napoleonic Wars (France, Egypt Spain, Prussia). He had a short career as a daring adventurer, fought on every front, executed many enemies, and died in the Battle of Wagram in 1809. Could he really have been in Spain to rescue our prisoner? Maybe, but not during the Spanish Inquisition, that's for sure.

So did Poe purposefully mislead his reader with good "buzz words" for torture references, or was he demonstrating that the prisoner might not have a grasp on reality, his narrative may not be reliable because of his mental illness-- torture inside his head, rather than his physical body?

Explain what the following quotes mean and how they relate to the story:

"I saw the lips of the black-robed judges. They appeared to me white--whiter than the sheet upon which I trace these words--and thin even to grotesqueness; thin with the intensity of their expression of firmness, of immovable resolution, of stern contempt of human torture."

Perhaps evidence that his "sentence" is madness? "These shadows of memory tell indistinctly of tall figures that lifted and bore me in silence down--down--still down--till a hideous dizziness oppressed me at the mere idea of the interminableness of the descent. They tell also of a vague horror at my heart on account of that heart's unnatural stillness. Then comes a sense of sudden motionlessness throughout all things; as if those who bore me (a ghastly train!) had outrun, in their descent, the limits of the limitless, and paused from the wearisomeness of their toil. After this I call to mind flatness and dampness; and then all is MADNESS--the madness of a memory which busies itself among forbidden things."

" In other conditions of mind I might have had courage to end my misery at once by a plunge into one of these abysses; but now I was the veriest of cowards. Neither could I forget what I had read of these pits--that the SUDDEN extinction of life formed no part of their most horrible plan."

"Still I quivered in every nerve to think how slight a sinking of the machinery would precipitate that keen glistening axe upon my bosom. It was hope that prompted the nerve to quiver--the frame to shrink. It was HOPE--the hope that triumphs on the rack--that whispers to the death-condemned even in the dungeons of the Inquisition."

"It was HOPE--the hope that triumphs on the rack--that whispers to the death-condemned even in the dungeons of the Inquisition."

"The result of the slightest struggle, how deadly! Was it likely, moreover, that the minions of the torturer had not foreseen and provided for this possibility! Was it probable that the bandage crossed my bosom in the track of the pendulum? Dreading to find my faint, and, as it seemed, my last hope frustrated, I so far elevated my head as to obtain a distinct view of my breast. The surcingle enveloped my limbs and body close in all directions save SAVE IN THE PATH OF THE DESTROYING CRESCENT."

"With a more than human resolution I lay STILL. Nor had I erred in my calculations, nor had I endured in vain. I at length felt that I was FREE."

"'Death,' I said 'any death but that of the pit!' Fool! might I not have known that INTO THE PIT it was the object of the burning iron to urge me? Could I resist its glow? or if even that, could I withstand its pressure?"

"There was a discordant hum of human voices! There was a loud blast as of many trumpets! There was a harsh grating as of a thousand thunders!"

Discussion Questions

1. What is the meaning of the epigraph and how does it relate to important aspects of the story?

3. Describe the chronology of the prisoner's ever-changing torture chamber, starting with pitch-black, when he uses a piece of his robe as a marker to assess its perimeter, all the way to its shrumken, molten form before his rescue.

4. Why did Poe choose a pendulum and not a guillotine, which was a more common instrument of torture (in both historical time periods)? For extra credit: identify the many ways Poe describes the pendulum (examples: a glistening axe, the destroying crescent)

5. Analyze Poe's use of CAPITAL words throughout the story, analyze their importance, meaning, and significance of order (if any).

6. How is this story representative of Dark Romanticism ? How is is representative of Gothic Literature ?

7. Identify and discuss Poe's use of symbols in the story. Include the rat, candles, pendulum, pit and any other symbols you discover (perhaps the surcingle/straps).

8. Discuss Poe's use of senses, particularly sound, as a literary device and its role in the prisoner's torture (moreso than the other senses). Provide textual evidence.

9. Is there any spiritual component to the story, or it all secular life and death? Be sure to discuss the use of "soul" references.

10. Explain the "King of Terrors" reference (second to last paragraph).

Essay prompt : Discuss the "math" in the story-- calculate the initial cell's shape and perimeter (53 or 54 paces or yards?),its volume based on what you know about the ceiling's shrinking height, the shrunken area when the walls flatten to acute angles, shifting form to a "lozenge." Also discuss the arc of the pendulum, its sweep (30 feet or more), its position (at right angles to prisoner's length), guess its rate of descent, and any other mathematical speculations that catch your fancy. (Feel free to diagram your findings). If you'd prefer to talk about the physics, discuss the friction coefficient of the pendulum.

Paired Reading Suggestions

Compare and contrast the gothic literary elements in The Pit and the Pendulum with:

Poe 's The Fall of the House of Usher is more of a journey of psychological terror, rather than this story's physical terror of the senses.

Poe 's The Raven

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge uses the pendulum as a symbol representing both time and an instrument of torture and death. Compare its symbolism in both stories.

You Choose : Pick a gothic story by a different author (try our Gothic, Ghost, Horror & Weird Library ) and compare its genre, theme & literary elements of terror with The Pit and the Pendulum .

Movie tie-in : Watch the 2012 movie The Raven , starring John Cusack as Edgar Allan Poe, with a Pit and Pendulum sequence, compare it affects of terror with the story.

Compare the epigraph in this story with the one offered as the opener for A Descent Into the Maelstrom 's in tone, theme, and affect on the reader as an "appetizer" for the story.

Useful Links

Biography and Works by Edgar Allan Poe

Overview of The Pit and the Pendulum

Dark Romanticism Study Guide

Gothic Literature Study Guide

Analysis of the epigraph in The Pit and the Pendulum

French General Antoine Charles Louis de Lasalle

The Jacobin Club and the French Revolution

Overview of the Spanish Inquisition

Lesson Plan: Intro to Gothic Literature Through Poe

Gothic Literature and its Origins

Gothic, Ghost, Horror & Weird Library

20 Great American Short Stories

Short Stories for High School

Short Stories for Middle School

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Analysis Pages

• Alliteration
• Character Analysis
• Foreshadowing
• Historical Context
• Personification
• Quote Analysis

Literary Devices in The Pit and the Pendulum

Use of Repetitive Language : Poe uses anadiplosis , a literary technique whereby the narrator repeats the last word from the previous clause to begin the next phrase. This technique contributes to an eerie atmosphere, like when the narrator states the he was bored “in silence down—down—still down.” Here, the repetitive emphasis of the word “down” reminds readers of the process of entombment, creating a sense of claustrophobia and inescapability. Anadiplosis also serves to demonstrate how the psychological torment imposed on the narrator has caused his mind to slowly deteriorate. The opening line with its repetitive language pattern, for example, demonstrates how the narrator’s sanity and rationality slowly fades: “I was sick—sick unto death with that long agony.”

Literary Devices Examples in The Pit and the Pendulum:

The pit and the pendulum.

"Free!—and in the grasp of the Inquisition!..."   See in text   (The Pit and the Pendulum)

This exclamation—”Free!”—followed by a dash and phrase pivots the narrator back into reality, and this phrase—”I had but escaped death...to be delivered unto worse death”—creates a sense of claustrophobia. At this point, the narrator has been freed, but he is still trapped within the pit, as illustrated by the structure of this sentence.

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"Down—steadily down it crept...."   See in text   (The Pit and the Pendulum)

Throughout the next three paragraphs, the narrator becomes intoxicated with terror, as revealed through the use of the literary technique anaphora , the repetition of the first word or phrase in successive phrases. Here, the narrator vividly describes as the pendulum’s plunging downward by beginning each of these three paragraphs with the word “down.” In the first paragraph, the pendulum creeps; in the second, it descends “certainly, relentlessly”; finally, it descends “still unceasingly—still inevitably.” The closer the pendulum gets, the more frantic and urgent the diction becomes, the more vivid and terrifying the imagery transforms.

"Perspiration burst from every pore..."   See in text   (The Pit and the Pendulum)

Kinesthesia, or kinesthetic imagery, is a literary device whereby the narrator describes physical bodily movement or action. Poe uses this technique frequently to detail how the narrator is physically incapacitated. Here, readers gather a sense of the frenzy of the narrator, whose perspiration bursts uncontrollably “from every pore.”

"I grew aghast lest there should be nothing to see...."   See in text   (The Pit and the Pendulum)

One of the ways Poe induces terror throughout his story is through the unknown. The narrator dreads opening his eyes and seeing what might be before him. Instead of fearing the tangible, he fears “nothing,” and when he opens his eyes, he confirms his worst fears when he sees that he is trapped in an empty abyss.

"So far, I had not opened my eyes. ..."   See in text   (The Pit and the Pendulum)

Up until this point in the story, the narrator has used auditory and tactile imagery to describe what he has witnessed in the pit—the strange sounds he overhears and the feeling of the sable drapes or the darkness that overcomes him. Sporadically, he has peppered the text with visual imagery to describe the the whiteness of the judge’s lips or the blackness of the pit. However, as the narrator readily admits, “so far, I had not opened my eyes.” The visual imagery, the narrator concedes, has been entirely fabricated in his mind, further eroding his credibility as a reliable, sane narrator.

"Then a pause in which all is blank...."   See in text   (The Pit and the Pendulum)

As the narrator wades in and out of consciousness, his hearing becomes affected. At one moment he is enveloped in sound, and at the next, he is surrounded in silence. The narrator portrays this oscillation in sound through evocative language that builds on itself through anaphora , the repetitive use of a phrase or word at the beginning of a sentence. Throughout this passage, the narrator repeats the word “then” at the beginning of each line to switch imperceptibly from moments of loud commotion to moments of utter silence.

"silence down—down—still down—..."   See in text   (The Pit and the Pendulum)

The narrator constantly uses repetitive language to highlight his diminishing grip on reality. For example, in the first paragraph, the narrator phrases the opening line as “I was sick—sick” and explains that the lips of the black-robed judges are “white—whiter than the sheets upon which I trace these words.” In this passage, the narrator employs the same repetitive language, stating that the tall figures “bore me in silence down—down—still down,” an image which eerily resembles the process of entombment. Here, the narrator employs the literary tool anadiplosis , whereby the narrator repeats the last word from the previous clause to begin the next. Such a tool functions to exacerbate the narrator’s condition because it often adds a sense of greater despair.

"no! In delirium—no! In a swoon—no! In death—no!..."   See in text   (The Pit and the Pendulum)

With erratic punctuation in the form of exclamation points and em dashes, the narrator breaks the narrative flow. As the narrator describes how he wades in and out of sleep, he is suddenly jolted awake with this exclamation. The contradictory language, highlighted with the repetition of “no!”, suggests that the narrator cannot maintain a steady stream of consciousness and is on the brink of insanity.

"I WAS SICK—sick unto death with that long agony..."   See in text   (The Pit and the Pendulum)

“The Pit and the Pendulum” is told from a first-person point of view. In effect, the reader experiences the horror the protagonist endures from a firsthand perspective, allowing the reader to witness the torture on a much more intimate level. This opening line also sheds light on the narrator’s mental and physical state. Throughout the story, neither the narrator nor the reader ever find out what crime he committed, or if he is even aware of what crime he is being punished for. Poe creates a narrator who is teetering on the brink of insanity. As the story opens, we encounter a narrator who is sick “unto death,” meaning that he is both physically and mentally enfeebled. His mental and physical precariousness causes the reader to consider his reliability.