Pit And The Pendulum Effect

How Poe Creates an Unified Effect in “The Pit and the Pendulum” Edgar Allen Poe’s short story, “The Pit and the Pendulum”, introduces a tale of torture and death as the Spanish Inquisition prosecutes the narrator. The narrator wakes up in a pitch-dark room, most likely an Inquisition prison. He walks around to scout his surroundings only to fall and doze off multiple times. As he wakes up, he discovers he is bound to a wooden board with many straps. Only after, does he notice a crescent-shaped metal pendulum swinging towards him at a terribly slow pace. When time is certain to run out, he creates a devilishly smart plan to escape. However, he is only to realize these heated, spiked walls closing in, either leaving him to jump into a deep pit or be crushed by the walls. Fortunately, a French general arrives and terminates the Inquisition. Thus, through the illustration of mental torture and the afterlife of the human mind, …show more content…
The illustration of relentless, mental torture is conveyed through detailed and oppressing suspense, hence depicting a tone of horror. The audience hears the internal horror of the first person narrator and experiences the torture as he does. Along with devices such as suspense, Poe consistently tortures the narrator physically and mentally, allowing the character to “vent in one loud, long, and final scream of despair” as he is about to be killed (56). Also, the contribution of mental suspense adds a tone of inevitable death to the story. In one case, the unnamed narrator realizes that “the [pendulum] was designed to cross the region of [his] heart” (52). The author juxtaposes the tone of inevitable death that is just moments away. Furthermore, an internal conflict arises while the protagonist “could no longer doubt the doom prepared for me by monkish ingenuity in torture” (51). The narrator must be mentally terrorized by the verification of his death