How does Poe create suspense in "The Pit and the Pendulum"?
One way that Poe creates suspense from the very beginning is by giving us an unreliable narrator to narrate the events. He opens the narrative by telling us that he himself doesn't fully trust his senses:
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.
If the narrator himself doesn't feel that he has full control of his senses and faculties, how can we be sure of the details that follow? How will he portray the events?
Suspense is further generated by the setting. Part of the narrator's torture is that his punishment is hidden in darkness:
At length, with a wild desperation at heart, I quickly unclosed my eyes. My worst thoughts, then, were confirmed. The blackness of eternal night encompassed me. I struggled for breath. The intensity of the darkness seemed to oppress and stifle me. The atmosphere was intolerably close.
The unknown terrors that lay waiting for the narrator in the darkness increase his sense of panic, and therefore, the reader's as well. Darkness is often symbolic of evil, and this sense of foreboding danger intensifies as the narrator attempts to navigate his dark surroundings.
Thus, the narrator's reaction to his torture increases suspense. Perspiration bursts from every pore. His eyes strain for hope. He thrusts his arms wildly in all directions.
And then, of course, there is the method of torture itself. A swinging pendulum that ends in a sharp blade which descends ever closer to the narrator, with potentially disastrous results, creates a building sense of terror. The pendulum descends slowly, allowing the narrator much time to consider his gruesome end and time for the reader's anticipation to build, as well.
Poe masterfully crafts a language that furthers an eerie tone, utilizing words such as "relentlessly," "unspeakable," "devoured," "struggled," and "annihilated"—and weaving this language throughout the story to increase the story's suspense.
How does Poe create suspense in "The Pit and the Pendulum"?
Poe creates suspense, in part, by using a first person narrator. This means that the narrator is a participant in the action and that he uses the first person pronoun, "I." The first person narrator can really only tell us what he's aware of and what he knows to be true, as opposed to a third person narrator who might be able to tell us what all the other characters are thinking and feeling. Because the narrator's perception is limited by darkness and his experience is limited by solitude, he can only tells us as much as he knows, and that is not too much. This creates suspense. Further, the narrator loses consciousness more than once, and we are as clueless as he is as to what he will find when he awakens. Moreover, the narrator talks about being in Toledo, and given his trial, judgment, and torture, we might ascertain that he is being held by the Spanish Inquisition, and this would create suspense as well because we know how ruinous and deadly it was.
How does Poe create suspense in "The Pit and the Pendulum"?
I think that a big part of the suspense in "The Pit and Pendulum" comes from two sources.
The first is the unknown. The reader has no idea why the protagonist has been arrested and sentenced. The opening paragraphs have him in and out of conscious thought all while hallucinating. We don't know who he is or what he has done to deserve punishment. Once he is in his cell, the unknown continues. It's too dark to see anything, so the protagonist (and reader) has no idea where he is. After he successfully evades the pit, the protagonist must face the pendulum. There is always a sense of "what could possibly come next?" That's suspenseful reading.
The second source for suspense is the protagonist's solitude. Being alone in an unknown place is scary. Having to suffer alone is scary. If the narrator had a cellmate, then readers might hope the two could at least help each other cope. That isn't an option for the protagonist, though. He must go about his torture alone. He's only dependent on himself, which I believe makes the story more suspenseful.
What creates a horror atmosphere in Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum"?
Poe creates an atmosphere of horror in "The Pit and the Pendulum" by keeping the reader constantly in suspense and uncertainty. Readers are plunged abruptly into the action from the first sentence, without any explanations. The narrator is sick, but it is unclear why. They unbind him and permit him to sit, but we do not know who "they" are. He is sentenced to death, but his crime is undisclosed. These uncertainties are all contained in the first few lines, creating a feeling that anything could happen.
This technique continues throughout the story. The narrator's cell is so profoundly dark that anything could be lurking within it. His mind is tormented with fables and images "too ghastly to repeat." It takes him quite some time to discover the pit while he continually reflects on all the horrible ways in which he might die. When he later faces death from the pendulum, the huge rats which deliver him from his plight are even more physically disgusting than the prospect of death from the swinging scimitar. Even his salvation, therefore, contributes to the atmosphere of horror:
They pressed—they swarmed upon me in ever accumulating heaps. They writhed upon my throat; their cold lips sought my own; I was half stifled by their thronging pressure; disgust, for which the world has no name, swelled my bosom, and chilled, with a heavy clamminess, my heart.
The narrator's rescue by General Lasalle brings a sudden end to the story. This means that the nightmarish atmosphere of uncertainty and terror persists until the last few lines. Until then, readers feels that a terrible death might overtake the narrator at any time, preserving the atmosphere of horror until the last possible moment.
List five horrifying details of the setting in "The Pit and the Pendulum." Which detail evoked the most horror?
One detail that always stands out as especially terrifying is the fact that the short story is set during the Inquisition. Most of my students have no idea what this means, and I have to explain the horrors that happened at this point in history. Readers hopefully know about that time period, but the narrator of the piece definitely knows the horrors that the Inquisition can bring upon him.
. . . the tales respecting the Inquisition. To the victims of its tyranny, there was the choice of death with its direst physical agonies, or death with its most hideous moral horrors. I had been reserved for the latter.
Other horrifying details are the fact that his cell is absolutely pitch black. It has a pit in the middle of it that he is supposed to fall into. The pendulum slowly descending to cut him in half is also terrifying. Finally, the walls are heated to a glow and then begin squeezing in on him from two sides. He's left with the choice of being squished to death by burning hot walls or jumping to his death in the pit. The entire thing is horrifying.
As for which is the most terrifying, each reader is going to have to choose. For me, I can't decide between two. The complete and utter darkness is particularly terrifying to me. I'm not afraid of the dark . . . in my own home. I know where things are. I recognize the sounds. It's not scary; however, I have been in some deep underground caves and had the tour guide turn off the lights. The darkness was so complete that I couldn't see the hand in front of my face. It felt so oppressive that it weirdly became slightly harder to breathe. If that was my situation, in a cell, during the Inquisition, I would be frozen with fear. The other one that I find terrifying is the pendulum. You can see it coming, and it's coming slowly. You have time to imagine your death and the pain that it will bring. It's also not going to be a quick death like the guillotine. You will survive for quite some time as that pendulum descends through your body bit by bit.
List six horrific details in "The Pit and the Pendulum."
In one descriptive and horrible detail, the narrator addresses the judges who condemn him to death. He specifically describes his impression of their lips, which become seemingly inhuman and oddly nightmarish in his near-delirium. He says,
I saw the lips of the black-robed judges. They appeared to me white—whiter than the sheet upon which I trace these words—and thin even to grotesqueness; thin with the intensity of their expression of firmness—and immovable resolution—of stern contempt of human torture [....]. I saw them writhe with a deadly locution. I saw them fashion the syllables of my name; and I shuddered because no sound succeeded.
Lips aren't white, as they usually have at least a little pigment as well as plumpness. However, to the narrator, his judges' lips are so white and thin, and when he describes them as "writh[ing]" they almost call to mind snakes: a particularly upsetting image.
A second horrible image comes quickly on the former's heels. The narrator says,
And then my vision fell upon the seven tall candles upon the table. At first they wore the aspect of charity, and seemed white slender angels who would save me; but then, all at once, there came a most deadly nausea over my spirit, and I felt every fibre in my frame thrill as if I had touched the wire of a galvanic battery, while the angel forms became meaningless spectres, with heads of flame [...].
First, he uses a metaphor, comparing the candles to angels who might be comforting in this, his hour of need; however, his next simile destroys this possibility. He feels as though he's touched a battery and been electrified by it, so agitated does he feel. Finally, he returns to the metaphor, and now the candles are not angels but horrifying spirits with heads made of fire.
But before the narrator can even adjust to these perceptions, he says,
[...] the judges vanished, as if magically, from before me; the tall candles sank into nothingness; their flames went out utterly; the blackness of darkness supervened; all sensations appeared swallowed up in a mad rushing descent as of the soul into Hades. Then silence, and stillness, and night were the universe.
This third horrible detail describes a darkness so black, which comes upon him so unexpectedly and suddenly, that he can sense absolutely nothing around him. Now totally deprived of two of his senses, the narrator is essentially sightless and deaf: to plunge so deeply into this darkness and silence would be quite horrifying.
He swoons and awakens, but keeps his eyes shut. When he finally develops the strength to open them, he says,
My worst thoughts, then, were confirmed. The blackness of eternal night encompassed me. I struggled for breath. The intensity of the darkness seemed to oppress and stifle me. The atmosphere was intolerably close.
In this fourth horrible detail, the narrator describes the awful oppressiveness of the darkness. It is as though, with the loss of his sight in this terrifying "eternal night," his sense of touch becomes overwhelmed. He can physically feel the darkness, and it seems to press down on him.
He swoons again, and
Upon recovering, I at once started to my feet, trembling convulsively in every fibre. I thrust my arms wildly above and around me in all directions. I felt nothing; yet dreaded to move a step, lest I should be impeded by the walls of a tomb.
This fear, the terror of being buried alive, is a fairly common one, something many of us might relate to or, at least, understand. To be so blind and to have such a fear, not being able to see one's hand in front of one's face, let alone where and if there are walls and how close they are, is horrible.
The narrator later describes the work of another sense:
[...] my forehead seemed bathed in a clammy vapor, and the peculiar smell of decayed fungus arose to my nostrils.
Rendered blind by the dark and deaf by the utter silence, this horrible detail describes what he can smell—a terrible, stomach-churning smell of rotting organic matter.
List six horrific details in "The Pit and the Pendulum."
There are so many to choose from in this gothic short story. It might be worth thinking about some of the following points that add a great deal to the amount of horror and fear in this tale:
1) The pit that the narrator only finds by chance when he trips over just before he walks into it when his prison is plunged into darkness.
2)The way his food and drink is obviously drugged so that he can be controlled and moved so further torture can be set up for him.
3) The description of him being tied up as he watches the pendulum descend.
4) The description of the rancid fat that he rubs into his cords that bind him.
5) The idea of the rats jumping on top of him as they gnaw his cords.
6) Lastly, the final section of the novel, when the hot walls of the prison press in, pushing him ever closer to falling into the pit.
What is key above all else is to note that these are tortures that are terrible and psychologically oppressive, as the narrator describes when he talks about the Inquisition:
To the victims of its tyranny, there was the choice of death with its direst physical agonies, or death with its most hideous moral horrors. I had been reserved for the latter. By long suffering my nerves had been unstrung, until I trembled at the sound of my own voice, and had become in every respect a fitting subject for the species of torture which awaited me.
It is the "hideous moral horrors" that the speaker suffers that make this tale truly terrible, and his description of himself as a person who has become "unstrung" is truly disturbing.
What are some horrible details of the setting in "The Pit and the Pendulum"?
The narrator describes the "few moments" he spends in "delirious horror," in which he sees the "soft and nearly imperceptible waving of the sable draperies which enwrapped the walls of the apartment." Further, he sees the "seven tall candles upon the table" which seem, at first, like charitable angels who are there to save him, but then they become "meaningless spectres, with heads of flame." It is bad enough when the narrator describes the lips of his judges as "thin even to grotesqueness" and "writh[ing]" as they speak his fate, but to be completely surrounded by black—both from the drapes and from the judges's robes—and to watch the bright and inspiring candles turn into devils from which he can anticipate no mercy makes this scene seem completely horrible.
Later, in his dungeon, the narrator describes how his "worst thoughts . . . were confirmed" by the "blackness of eternal night" that encompassed him. He can hardly breathe because the "intensity of the darkness seemed to oppress and stifle [him]." The walls surrounding him are "very smooth, slimy, and cold," and, though not a tomb, the ground is "moist and slippery" and causes him to fall. When he finds the pit, he realizes that his "forehead seemed bathed in a clammy vapor, and the peculiar smell of decayed fungus arose to [his] nostrils." Thus, the horrible darkness and gross and terrifying surroundings certainly add to the horror of the story.
What are some horrible details of the setting in "The Pit and the Pendulum"?
The torture chamber in which the narrator finds himself in "The Pit and the Pendulum" has multiple horrors. Here are six:
1. Utter darkness: When the narrator first wakes up in the cell, he finds that "the blackness of the eternal night encompassed me," causing him to gasp for breath.
2. The pit: When he encounters the pit, he is unable to see it. He drops a pebble down, and it falls for about a minute before he hears it splash in the water. The fact that he would have fallen into it if he had not tripped on his robe is petrifying; the thought that there may be more than one pit in the chamber is worse.
3. Decoration: Later, when he can see, he notices the horrible figures of fiends and skeletons drawn on the walls, and when the walls heat up, they become very bright in color and even scarier.
4. The pendulum: This torture device is terrifying, and part of its terror is that it moves so slowly that the character has time to contemplate his oncoming doom.
5. Rats: Rats are constantly swarming about him when he is strapped to the table, and when he spreads the food on his bonds, hundreds of them are crawling all over him, making "a disgust, for which the world has no name, [swell] his bosom."
6. The walls: After he escapes from under the pendulum, the walls begin closing in on him and heating up until they are just about to force him into the pit.
The torture chamber designed by Poe is certainly one of the creepiest settings in literature.
What is the tone of Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum"?
Edgar Allan Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum" is one of his many Gothic short stories. As with most American Gothic literature, the tone (or mood) of the story is one of the primary elements that make it Gothic. In this story, prisoner of war is in a torture chamber. Due to the first person point-of-view, the audience knows as little about the setting as the narrator, and most of the story takes place in the dark. As a result, a very specific tone is set.
The story is scary and eerie, first and foremost. There is a distinct element of fear present. It is also a mysterious tone, because so many questions are left unanswered, and so much is taking place in the dark. Between the fear and the mystery, the narrator goes in and out of fits of seeming madness and anxiety, creating a further tone of hysteria. Certainly, though the story is short, it is thrilling and intense from beginning to end.
For more help with this short story, feel free to check out the link below.
How does Poe create atmosphere and tension in "The Pit and the Pendulum"?
Poe was a master at creating spooky and suspenseful moods in stories. In "The Pit and The Pendulum," his narrator is subjected to gruesome torture during the Spanish Inquisition.
Poe toys with the narrators senses, creating a dream-like state of the narrator's judgement. The judges sound like a "dreamy hum," and then fade out, and shapes of candles appear as angels and become unclear again, and everything disappears into darkness. The narrator awakens into pitch black darkness, and fades in and out several times throughout the story. By telling the story through this narrator, the reader feels as though they, too, are moving in and out of consciousness.
When he next awakens into light, there are terrible images, and most prominent, an image of Father Time holding a razor sharp pendulum that is getting closer and closer. Poe toys with the ideas of light and dark, and creates a swinging pendulum to count down the time that the narrator has left.
The use of these sensory shifts and the description of the terrifying images, tiny suffocating space, the counting down of the swinging pendulum, and the closing of the walls all lend to the tense, horrifying atmosphere of the story.
What are six horrible details of the setting in "The Pit and the Pendulum"?
First, the narrator describes the seven tall candles upon which he fixes his sight:
At first they wore the aspect of charity, and seemed white slender angels who would save me; but then, all at once, there came a most deadly nausea over my spirit, and I felt every fibre in my frame thrill as if I had touched the wire of a galvanic batter, while the angels forms became meaningless spectres, with heads of flame, and I saw that from them there would be no help.
The hopelessness inspired by the flame-headed spectral candles informs the narrator that there will be no angels to help or assist him. He is entering a shadowy world from which everything seems to indicate there will be no return for him. This is certainly a horrible prospect:
Second, the narrator feels as though he is descending into the terrifying underworld, except that he is not dead. He says that:
All sensations appeared swallowed up in a mad rushing descend as of the soul into Hades. Then silence, and stillness, and night were the universe.
Everything is black and empty and silent, so terrifying that the narrator passes out.
Third, he describes the horror of the vague memories he seems to have from when he had fainted. He says,
These shadows of memory tell, indistinctly, of tall figures that lifted and bore me in silence down—down—still down—till a hideous dizziness oppressed me at the mere idea of the interminableness of the descent. They tell also of a vague horror at my heart, on account of that heart’s unnatural stillness.
This horrifying descent, as if the narrator has been buried alive—a fate more horrible than a sudden death would be—haunts the narrator even after he regains consciousness.
Fourth, the narrator describes the fetid air of his dungeon. "The intensity of the darkness seemed to oppress and stifle me. The atmosphere was intolerably close." His inability to see coupled with the stifling and "close" air—perhaps it is quite humid below ground—is also horrifying.
Fifth, he swoons again and, when he wakes up, he begins to convulsively tremble. "I felt nothing," he says, "yet dreaded to move a step, lest I should be impeded by the walls of a tomb." This sensation of confusion produced by his swoons and the overwhelming feeling of being buried alive continues to horrify.
Finally, he also wonders if he's been "left to perish of starvation in this subterranean world of darkness [...]." This new possibility is likewise as terrible as the previously imagined ones.
What are six horrible details of the setting in "The Pit and the Pendulum"?
You are right in focusing on how Poe uses the setting of this terrifying tale to exacerbate the horror of the story. Certainly the following six details of the setting seem to contribute greatly to the overall atmosphere and mood of terror and impending doom:
1) When the narrator first describes the setting when he gains consciousness, refering to the "sabel draperies" and the "seven tall candles" upon the table which become the source of such a strong feeling of nausea in the narrator.
2) Clearly, the way in which he is aware in his state of unconciousness of being borne "down--down--still down" by shadowy figures until the narrator becomes confused and dizzied by the "interminableness of the descent" likewise reinforces the horror of the setting.
3) When the narrator gains consciousness again and is met by "the intensity of the darkness" that "stifles" him. He has no idea of his location and his whereabouts.
4) The terrifying discovery of the pit that he could so easily have fallen into if it were not for a fortunate accident presents the way that death is always near at hand in this setting.
5) The way in which the pendulum descends from the ceiling of this cell and the torture in which the narrator is going to meet his end is likewise a key moment of terror.
6) Lastly, the way in which the walls of the cell become hot and move in on the narrator, pushing him towards the maw of the terrifying pit, represent the last horror of the Inquisition and their determination to end the life of the narrator.
What sets the horrific scene in "The Pit and the Pendulum"?
The narrator begins his story by speaking of his sentence of death. The narrator then notes how he recalls the "inquisitorial" voices who convicted and sentenced him. The adjective "inquisitorial" indicates a reference to the Spanish Inquisition. The Spanish Inquisition was a particular part of a broad movement to enforce Catholic doctrine and influence; part of this enforcement required Catholic monarchs to find, suppress, and sometimes banish, torture or kill heretics (those who did not follow the Catholic faith).
Later in the story, the narrator refers to the "Inquisition" and the reference to the Spanish Inquisition becomes more clear:
And the death just avoided was of that very character which I had regarded as fabulous and frivolous in the tales respecting the Inquisition. To the victims of its tyranny, there was the choice of death with its direst physical agonies, or death with its most hideous moral horrors.
So, the narrator is one of these victims of the Spanish Inquisition. Evidently, he was accused of heresy and imprisoned in this dungeon. His sentence was death but that death was to be preceded by psychological and physical torture. The dungeon itself is in total darkness with the pit in the center which the narrator narrowly avoids falling into. Part of his psychological torture was to place him in an utterly dark dungeon with a pit that he could not see. Having avoided falling into the pit, the narrator was then subjected to the pendulum.
What are some extreme situations or settings in "The Pit and the Pendulum"?
Arguably, the whole situation of the Pit and the Pendulum is extreme in its entirety, as it is about death by torture. But within that, there is one situation that sticks out in how extreme it is: the narrator's escape from the pendulum. The narrator can only watch as the pendulum swings lower and lower with more and more force, making its way closer to him agonizingly slowly. He tries to escape on his own, but when he realizes that he cannot do that, he lures the rats onto him and, by spreading the last of his food upon the bonds that hold him down, makes them chew through the only thing holding him in place. The suspense of whether or not he will escape is heightened when he feels the blade actually cut his skin, but then the rats finally break all the bonds, and when the pendulum has passed him, he manages to move out of the way.
The setting of this story is also extreme in its entirety, but perhaps most of all when the walls start closing in on him - literally. He describes the characters on the wall as having glowing, demon eyes that stare him down, and the images of blood are all very vibrant. The walls start closing in on him in the shape of a diamond, forcing him towards the pit, and the only reason he escapes is because the French arrived to take over the Inquisition and they saved him. (That is by no means historically accurate - in fact, none of this is really - but that is what Poe decided had happened).
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