The Pit And The Pendulum Literary Analysis
The Spanish Inquisition was a bleak time where people were accused of being unfaithful to the Christian faith and death was not merely the loss of life but an endless endeavor toward insanity through torture. Edgar Allan Poe uses this instance and condition in "The Pit and the Pendulum." Throughout the story the question of the narrator's reliability is brought up through his references to madness, his suicide attempts, and his references to his own death. Through the story, the reader sees many events showing the narrator's reference to madness. While the narrator is watching the black-robed judges, he sees them appear before him, "They appeared to me white whiter than the sheet upon which I trace these words and thin even to grotesqueness,"
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After scrutinizing his confinement he realizes there is a deep abyss smelling of carrion and tries to jump but doesn't, "In other conditions of mind, I might have had the courage to end my misery at once, by plunge into one of these abysses; but now I was the yeriest of cowards,"(295). He realizes that if the conditions were different he would have jumped but he is a coward though he still tries to. He is still deciding if life is worth living. As the crescent blade oscillates above him he tries to shorten this torture, "I grew frantically mad and struggled to force myself upward against the sweep of the fearful scimitar," (297). He tries to move himself closer to the blade but with no avail. He comes closer at his second attempt to die. He fears it yet wants it now. Then as the walls of his confinement enclosed and engulfed him he gives up, "I struggled no more, but the agony of my soul found vent in one loud, long, and final scream of despair," (301).He gives up his struggle to survive and lets the wall push him into pit and he gives a final shout of despair. He has finally given up and accepted death. The circumstances now left him no choice and he chose death over a final struggle. These attempts to end his existence add to the reader's belief of his
After scrutinizing his confinement he realizes there is a deep abyss smelling of carrion and tries to jump but doesn't, "In other conditions of mind, I might have had the courage to end my misery at once, by plunge into one of these abysses; but now I was the yeriest of cowards,"(295). He realizes that if the conditions were different he would have jumped but he is a coward though he still tries to. He is still deciding if life is worth living. As the crescent blade oscillates above him he tries to shorten this torture, "I grew frantically mad and struggled to force myself upward against the sweep of the fearful scimitar," (297). He tries to move himself closer to the blade but with no avail. He comes closer at his second attempt to die. He fears it yet wants it now. Then as the walls of his confinement enclosed and engulfed him he gives up, "I struggled no more, but the agony of my soul found vent in one loud, long, and final scream of despair," (301).He gives up his struggle to survive and lets the wall push him into pit and he gives a final shout of despair. He has finally given up and accepted death. The circumstances now left him no choice and he chose death over a final struggle. These attempts to end his existence add to the reader's belief of his