The resolution to this frightening tale comes as the narrator, whoM the Inquisition is torturing, finds the walls of his room closing in on him. He is just about to be forced into the deadly pit in the center of the room when the French General LaSalle grabs his arm and saves him. LaSalle has liberated the Spanish town of Toledo and stops the Inquisition from killing the narrator just in the nick of time.
General LaSalle is what is known as a deus ex machina (Latin for "God from the machine"). This is a character or event that suddenly emerges out of nowhere to provide an answer to a seemingly hopeless problem and bring about a happy resolution. The deus ex machina provides a contrived, implausible ending, but he does save our narrator—and evokes, in this case, the sense of waking up from a nightmare and returning to the...
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rational world.
Ultimately, the resolution is that the narrator did not die in the torture chamber. He started off by trying to create his own resolution: he covered the ropes that were tying him down with food so that the rats would chew through them and set him free. However, once he is free and safe from the slowly descending pendulum, there is nowhere for him to go. As he stands in the room realizing this, the walls literally start to close in around him, forcing him towards the pit, which would be his death. But just as he is running out of room to avoid both the walls and the pit, the walls retract back to their normal place and the narrator is caught by the arm as he is about to fall into the pit by General Lasalle, a Frenchman who had taken over the town of Toledo, where the narrator was imprisoned. Thus, he was saved from his death, the branch of the Inquisition that resided in Toledo had been overtaken by the French, and that is how the story ends.
What is the resolution in "The Pit and the Pendulum" by Edgar Allan Poe?
In "The Pit and the Pendulum," by Edgar Allan Poe, our narrator has been tried and convicted of some crime. His punishment is death, but he does not know the method that will be used. He soon finds out when he awakens in a dark room with a slimy floor and what appears to be a bottomless pit below him. After eating and drinking, he falls into a drugged sleep and when he awakes, he is tied down with bandages, all but one arm, with a razor sharp pendulum swinging closer and closer to him from above. The narrator uses his free arm to smear the left over food over his bandages, so that the many rats in the room will eat through the bandages and free him. Once he is free, he realizes he is being watched, and next the burning walls begin to close in on him.
The resolution comes just as death is imminent. Suddenly, he is freed. This story takes place during the Spanish Inquisition when people were subject to all kinds of horrendous tortures. The ending of Poe's story is also the end of the Inquisition.
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