Breecia Gray, The Pit and the Pendulum by Edgar Allen Poe

Pit and the Pendulum Reader Response

Poe’s story is of a person sentenced to death by torture during the Spanish Inquisition. The story is an account of the narrator’s time from sentencing and throughout his journey during incarceration. It’s a tale of hope and despair. A story of one’s mental ability while facing an eminent death. Of this the narrator says, ‘It was hope—the hope that triumphs on the rack—that whispers to the death-condemned even in the dungeons of the Inquisition.’

Unusual for Poe, this story has a sense of unity and though still a horror story, it brings the reader a feeling of joy. He writes using a narrator with unfathomable hope and paints a picture of a person of high moral character, so much so that he finds comfort even in the face of death. The thought of sweet rest in the grave gives him a sense of calm which in turn helps him keep a cool, logical point of view. This logic and lack of fear of death, in turn helps him conquer the obstacles he faces and unlike many of his stories, this one has a heroic ending.

The story is told in first person narration. It begins with the narrator hearing of his sentencing to death. Though the Spanish Inquisition was run by religious leaders, this is not mentioned. Instead a physical description of the inquisitors is given of grotesquely thin, white, black-robbed men with a ‘stern contempt for human torture’. I find this description of them to be more demonic than godly. This presents the first noticeable gap. What is the Inquisition? Without background information of the time period, which is not mentioned by the narrator, or much knowledge of Poe himself, other than judges it is unclear who these grotesque figures are. It’s not until the final lines of the story that this gap is filled.

Another gap is apparent in the beginning. The narrator does not seem to know why is being imprisoned. The only textual information is that he is part of a revolution and facing an Inquisition.

As the hooded figures leave the room, seven candles appear. These candles at first seem to represent angels come to save him but soon are meaningless spectators. This is an early show of his hope followed by despair. When the candles are blown out, the silence and blackness surrounds him as he faints.

Upon waking in the dungeon, the narrator says, ‘I still lay quietly in an effort to exercise my reason’ and proceeds to deduce his situation. Though he has moments of what he refers to as ‘insensibility’, he remains logical and decides to examine his surroundings. He attempts to measure the room he is in only to discover, to his horror, there is a deep, circular pit in the center of it. He realizes he has to make a moral choice, to perish along the edge of the room or fall victim to the pit. Somehow he manages to find hope saying, ‘it seemed evident that mine was not, at least, the most hideous of fates’.

In order to keep his sense of logic, the narrator occupies his mind with trifle thoughts like calculating the dimensions of his dungeon. In time, his second death defying encounter begins. After being drugged from a pitcher of water, he wakes to find himself strapped to a board. He can see a painted figure of what he refers to as Time, though his description is that of the more modern Grim Reaper. This representation of Death is holding directly over him, instead of a scythe, a pendulum. To the narrators fear and wonderment, the pendulum is slowly moving.

The narrator is then briefly distracted by several enormous rats after a dish of meat. He attempts with great effort to shoo them away. He looks back at the pendulum to discover it has come about a yard closer to him and has a razor sharp edge. As the pendulum swings ever closer, the narrator again finds himself feeling hope. His hope then leads to thought which gives him strength and intuitively an idea forms in his mind. Using the few remnants of food in his reach, he covers his bindings with the greasy food to lure the rats. The rats start to chew through his bindings. This is a particularly gory part of the story. The narrator describes how, ‘With more than human resolution I lay still’. His description is so in depth here I can empathetically feel the rats crawling over me. Again, in the nick of time, our narrator escapes his doom. But relief is short.

The narrator says, ‘I had escaped death in one form of agony to be delivered unto worse than death in some other’. The walls of the dungeon are now moving in and the roof is on fire. Once again the narrator faces a choice, death by fire or death by pit.

Just as despair finally reaches the narrator, hope wills out. The narrator hears the sounds of human voices and trumpets. As the walls rush back, the hand of General Lasalle reaches out and saves him.