The Pit and the Pendulum

“The Pit and the Pendulum” by Edgar Allan Poe is another work that fits both the Romanticism and Dark Romanticism writing style. It is a story, taking place during the Spanish Inquisition, about a man incarcerated dealing with psychological aspects from torture and a certain amount of loneliness, and it is written eloquently and rhetorically with vast description. This is one reason that it fits the Romanticism Period. The amount of description in this story is so voluminous and appeals to almost every sense, taste is the excluded, that it is almost overwhelming. The narrator implements the senses by likening a scent to “the peculiar smell of decayed fungus” or saying “the odor of the sharp steel forced itself into my nostrils” (Poe). This is just the description of different scents, so his vivid imagery to the sense of sight is much more powerful.

More common elements of Dark Romanticism are focusing on the tragic, evil, mysteries, and limitations of man instead of the Romanticism that focuses on the individual; the Romanticism in general uses a lot of emotion and description also (Dark). The whole scenery of the story is pretty mystical. There is an unnamed man locked in a dungeon for unknown reasons and he is shrouded in darkness. A fitting reason of why “The Pit and the Pendulum” leans more toward the Dark Romanticism is that the main character is clearly human because he clearly has flaws. He has already been locked up, but he makes mistakes. He miscounts the paces it takes to walk the perimeter of his prison and assumes that it is irregularly shaped when it is a square, and he is actually drugged at one point. He even deems himself “the veriest of cowards” (Poe 267). The poem clearly uses torture a lot, which is obviously a dark element. The narrator often brings up common torture tactics of the Inquisition like the autos-da-fe, where the accused were burned alive (Poe 265). He is constantly tortured both mentally and physically. He aches for food, he has a scythe that could strike him, and he is in utter darkness and loneliness. This leads to the psychological aspects of the story.

The story is told in a first person point of view with the narrator talking to himself, or more so the story is what he is thinking. This is because he is alone with his thoughts. He displays changing emotions from despair and a want to die like when he says “the thought of sweet rest there must be in the grave” to hope and even joy. Sova references the overall situation as “a symbolic story about everyone's worst nightmare and an allegory of the most basic human situation and dilemma.” This is good information to have to help determine his mental state. He is facing everyone’s worst nightmare, so it makes sense to be somewhat emotionally unstable. Hope, fear, pain, anxiety, and confusion are all feelings of the narrator. In the end he is saved from this dark nightmare, but there are still many questions left unanswered.

"Dark Romanticism - ArticleWorld." Main Page - ArticleWorld. Web. 19 Jan. 2012. .

Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Pit and the Pendulum.” Comp. Jeffrey D. Wilhelm, Ph.D. and Douglas Fisher, Ph.D. Glencoe Literature. American Literature ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill Companies, 2009. 263-273. Print.

Sova, Dawn B. "'The Pit and the Pendulum'." Critical Companion to Edgar Allan Poe: A Literary Reference to His Life and Work, Critical Companion. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2007. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= ffazpoe095001&SingleRecord=True (accessed January 19, 2012).