The Pit and the Pendulum

The Pit and the Pendulum is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe. Poe is a dark romanticist, so the story obviously has some dark romanticist qualities. The story is about a man who is put in jail. At first the cell is very dark. The man makes his way around the cell to try and see how long it is. He then tries to walk across the cell. He stumbles and realizes that he is right in front of a giant pit. Scared, the man returns to the wall. He is given something to eat that has a type of drug in it to make him fall asleep. He awakes to find himself tied to a table with a giant pendulum swinging high above him. After struggling for a very long time the man realizes that he has to wait for the pendulum to get very close to him so it can cut off the rope around his hands. He manages to free himself of the ropes of the death from the pendulum. The pendulum then rises back up to the ceiling. A little while later the walls start to move in slightly. They are metal and very hot, so the man cannot touch them. The walls are trying to force the man into the pit: a horrible and tragic death. Right before the man is about to be forced into the pit, the walls stop and a man grabs his hand and saves him.

There are many characteristics of dark romanticism in this short story. There are black robed judges. Black is a very dark color. (Obviously).

"I was sick, sick unto death, with that long agony, and when they at length unbound me, and I was permitted to sit, I felt that my senses were leaving me. The sentence, the dread sentence of death, was the last of distinct accentuation which reached my ears. After that, the sound of the inquisitorial voices seemed merged in one dreamy indeterminate hum" (Poe).

This quote shows some characteristics of dark romanticism because it talks about death, being sick, long agony, being sentenced to death, and loosing one's senses.

"And now, as I still continued to step cautiously onward, there came thronging upon my recollection a thousand vague rumours of the horrors of Toledo. Of the dungeons there had been strange things narrated -- fables I had always deemed them -- but yet strange, and too ghastly to repeat, save in a whisper. Was I left to perish of starvation in this subterranean world of darkness; or what fate perhaps even more fearful awaited me? That the result would be death, and a death of more than customary bitterness, I knew too well the character of my judges to doubt. The mode and the hour were all that occupied or distracted me" (Poe).

This quote also shows some characteristics of dark romanticism. It too talks about death. It also says that the man heard stories about the prison, Toledo, that he was in. He says he heard weird stories of things he thought were a myth. This statement from the man brings a lot of scary pictures to the readers' minds. I know it brought some sick pictures to my mind...pictures of horrible death traps and other unimaginable things.

I final example of dark romanticism in the story is when all the rats come and kind of attack the man. That part is extremely nasty. When the man is tied to the table, all the rats come running up from the pit. They run and jump all over the man, but the man cannot do anything about it because he is tied down. The rats eat almost all of his food. One of them even goes in his mouth! Sick! I do not know about other readers, but when I read this part, I freaked out. Poe uses a great amount of imagery and other devices to make the reader really sense everything that is going on. It was a great story, but very, very disturbing.

Works Cited:

Poe, Edgar Allen. "The Pit and the Pendulum." Glencoe Literature. Comp. Jeffrey Wilhelm. American Literature. Ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill. 2010. 263-273. Print.