The Pit and the Pendulum is a psychological story that resembles very closely the major characteristics of a dark romanticism story. The main character has been sentenced to death during the Inquisition(Poe). That first theme or basic principle of the story is him being held to die, which is resembling a major characteristic of the Dark Romanticism period. A common theme is this dark romanticism is the dark, unknown, creepy, subject of death. He is afraid that he is going to die, but he feels a sense of confusion because usually during the Inquisition people are put to death by hanging, but he is trapped in this tomb. It is like a dungeon. He eventually beings exploring and does things like counting steps of the perimeter to see how large this place he is in because he can not see because he is in complete darkness(Stade). Being in this tomb is like torture for this guy that is trapped in there. Darkness itself is a common theme of Dark Romanticism as is present in this short story.
The torturing continues in the story. The narrator collapses and falls asleep and when he wakes up he finds bread and water. It is like the people torturing him are keeping him alive only to torture him more. It is terrible actually. After eating he ends up exploring some more and ends up falling and hits the solid ground, but his face dangles over this abyss like thing. It is the pit(Poe). It is a dark deep unknown hole that seems to have no bottom. He tries to see how deep it is by throwing a rock down to the bottom and the rock just keeps going and going and he can know see that the bottom pretty much has no end. This is unknown and dark and scary because there is no way he would live if he fell into this dark deep pit. They just keep messing with this guys head.
Eventually the narrator is strapped to a board and this pendulum is swinging at him. It is like he is seeing his life flash right before his eyes. He is just sitting there with time to think about him dying and how his life is going to end. He ends up being able to time this pendulum swinging at him to tell where it is to almost help cope with the fact that this pendulum is swinging at him. Things are less scary if you do not have the time to sit there and think about him, but the people are torturing him and want him to be scared. However, this fear is all in his mind it is psychological(Stade).
Toward the end of this story the man is saved and all of this worrying and psychological fears are not even worth it because his life is not going to end. He is finally to the point where he is accepting his death and he is no longer going to spend his time in that dark place worrying about it because he has accepted that he is going to die and that life is not going to be over because not everything ends in life...He believes there is some afterlife.
"Pit and the Pendulum by Edgar Allan Poe." The Literature Network: Online Classic Literature, Poems, and Quotes. Essays & Summaries. Web. 23 Jan. 2012.
Stade, George, and Karen Karbiener. "romanticism." Encyclopedia of British Writers, 1800 to the Present, Second Edition. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2009. Bloom's Literary Reference Online. Facts On File, Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?ItemID=WE54&SID=5&iPin= EBWEP364&SingleRecord=True (accessed January 23, 2012).
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