The Pit and the Pendulum

The Pit and the Pendulum (Published in 1842) is one of Poe's most famous tales of horror. It is an incredibly descriptive short story depicting the tale of a man, who is faced with trial during the Spanish inquisition. The book relies on evoking fear in the reader because of its heavy emphasis on sensation, depicted by the emotive and heavily definitive narration of the book.

The book packs a punch, primarily due to the sense of reality incorporated within, rather than a supernatural element which simply isn't evident. The story takes place in the prisons, or torture chambers rather of Toledo. At the start of the story, however the man is placed in front of a what seems to be an already decided judge, at from this point onwards he knows that his fate has already been sealed.
From the very start we are thrust into the experience of the prisoner undergoing torture, but the methods are very unclear and somewhat uncertain. He has short snippets of flashbacks of a trial, with the judges who are described in a harsh narrative, somewhat grotesquely. Almost all throughout the tale the prisoner attempts to dissociate himself over time from the situation he is in, portraying a sense of immediacy to the reader. The confusion of the prisoner is portrayed through misunderstandings such as, at first he believes he is in a tomb, but later discovers he is in a cell. The confusion of the prisoner builds suspense in the tale, and its this element of suspense which somewhat involves the reader as the determination and courage of the character develops against all the odds.
The tension in the story is very thoughtfully restrained. The slow but inevitable swing of the pendulum blade within the cell mirrors the gradual progress of the prisoner's exploration of his location, before he discovers that at the centre of the cell, there is a gargantuan pit. At this point of the story the characters inventiveness unveils, as the prisoner uses his meagre supply of food to lure rats to chew at his bonds, only to be met by the next stage of his torture, where he finds himself being closed in on by red-hot metal walls.
The mortal ending, when the prisoner is personally liberated from the brink of peril by Napoleon's General Lasalle of the French army, is hard to fathom. The ending to this tale is unusual to one of Poe's books, due to the lack of brutality, and the ending comes after the increasing drips of suspense built up during the tale. Perhaps Poe had a change of heart, and welcomed a less brutal ending to his readers? Or perhaps he was simply giving into convention, as the prisoner was the narrator, so logically he had to survive, in which case irony is unveiled due to the narrators deep anxiety about death.
This book is perhaps one of the most powerful I have read, and had me at the edge of my seat throughout the entirety of the book. I would definitely recommend it, and many other of Edgar Allan Poe's books as they are often very contextual and explore deeper meanings to common things.

by Joe Ward