Length: 698 words (2 double-spaced pages)
Rating: Red (FREE)      
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The Pit and the Pendulum

 

"The place where you die is where you become young again."

 

The accused in "The Pit and the Pendulum" is obviously being persecuted. For what religion or practice we do not know. For what crime it is not said. The prisoner does not even question his guilt or innocence. The accused in this story, to whom Poe does not give a name, is subjected to three life threatening situations.

 

Poe, along with other English Romantics believed that being born was actually coming to the end of another existence. With this in consideration could the tomb in which the prisoner was confined be thought of as a womb? Could then the pit be considered a tunnel that leads to a New World?

 

Poe utilizes one of the most common and universal phobias in "The Pit and the Pendulum," which is the darkness. Imagine you are condemned to death and wake to find that you cannot see your hand two inches from your face. Darkness commonly evokes feelings of anxiety, but under these circumstances I would think absolute terror. The tomb is dark, and only by an accident does the accused escape the pit and certain death. The victim searched for a rock in order to estimate the depths, which he just avoided. As the masonry hit the water far below, a light burst into his vault and a door swiftly shut. The slamming door was his first awareness that he was being monitored constantly; his torturers were adjusting his torments to his abilities at avoiding disaster.

 

The prisoner wakes only to realize that he is strapped onto a board and bound by a "surcingle". The word he uses is significant; it can apply to the binding of saddle on a horse, or to the binding of a priest's cassock. He perceived himself as bound like an animal by the belt of a priest, symbolically bound to the demented will of his prison-masters. Far above his bound body, on the ceiling of the chamber, was the figure of Time holding what appeared to be a scythe. Upon closer examination what appeared to be a scythe was a giant, razor sharp pendulum making a slow and deadly descent. One could interpret the figure of Time as the character's realization that his time is running out. I think Poe's introduction of the figure of Time suggests to all of us that we have only the time that is given us.

 

Fear and stress caused the prisoner to pass out. Upon wakening he became aware that the pendulum had halted its decent, only to resume after he became conscious of it. Undoubtedly, the pendulum was under the strict control of his tormentors. His escape from the pendulum was through a variant of Aesop's fable of the mouse and the elephant, where the smallest beast liberated the greatest through the act of gnawing away his shackles. He smeared himself with meat and subjected himself to the horror of having rats crawl all over him gnawing at the surcingle. He was free from the pendulum. Free only to be tortured further.

 

The smell of heated iron was his initial clue that the iron walls were getting hotter, and he was forced to shield himself from the heat. Not only that, but the room's dimensions shifted to a "lozenge" (diamond) shape, that forced him to the center. The walls pushed closer still forcing him to the brink of the pit. The prisoner had thoughts of jumping into the pit and ending his torment. When all hope was thought to be lost, the walls rushed back, and he was freed by General LaSalle's army.

 

"The Pit and the Pendulum" is an extraordinary representation of the never-ending battle between victory and defeat. In a sense we all totter on the brink of a pit, every one of us tormented by something. Some people label Poe as a horror writer, however I think he just had a unique style of expressing his emotions. I believe Poe intended "The Pit and the Pendulum" to be a small-scale representation of life and the trials and tribulations within.