The Pit and the Pendulum
Study Guide for Edgar Allan Poe's Gothic Masterpiece of Terror
One of Poe's best known gothic tales, offering plenty of literary allusions and a particularly graphic narrative
Edgar Allan Poe's The Pit and the Pendulum (1832) is a masterpiece of Gothic Literature that immerses readers in the elevated terrors of an unnamed prisoner facing torture and death. Through vivid sensory descriptions and mounting dread, Poe crafts an unforgettable exploration of fear, hope, and survival.
This study guide helps teachers and students more fully appreciate the story's rich symbolism, historical allusions, and literary techniques.
Read the Story
Before diving into the analysis, read or revisit the complete story:
Character Analysis & Plot Summary
Characters
Unnamed Prisoner - The narrator is condemned to death by sinister judges, supposedly during the Spanish Inquisition, who incarcerate him in a hellish prison cell, where he experiences terror after terror.
Judges - The seven judges who condemn the prisoner to torture and death.
General Lasalle - Napoleon's general who rescues the Inquisition prisoner from his torturers just in the nick of time.
The Rats - The unlikely heroes of the story, who chew the prisoner's bindings loose so he can escape the descending pendulum before it slices him to death.
The Cell - OK, the prison cell isn't a character per se, but it is a mysterious, transformative (and shrinking) torture chamber that makes for an interesting dynamic in the story. Never mind the most terrifying feature, a glowing pit of fire.
Plot Summary
The story is about the elevated terrors experienced by an unnamed prisoner in a torture chamber, sentenced to death by sinister judges of the Spanish Inquisition. In complete darkness, he tries to measure the slimy cell's dimensions with a torn section of his robe, sees a mural of Father Time and a knife-edged pendulum from the ceiling that gradually descends to his seemingly certain death. He's completely bound to a wooden board, except for his left elbow to hand, enough to drink a beverage and eat, before scattering the rancid meat on the straps to entice rats to gnaw his way to freedom, just as the pendulum makes body contact. The walls become red-hot, the room shrinks him so he has nowhere to go but the molten pit of iron, when all of a sudden trumpets sound and the French Army, General Lasalle at the helm, rescues him from the evil Inquisition prison. Happy ending? As good as can be expected in Poe's sensory horror thriller-- or is it all a hallucination tripped by mental illness?
Genre & Themes
Genre
Gothic Literature / Dark Romanticism - Poe's story is in the darkest reaches of Dark Romanticism, in the genre of Gothic Literature due to its focus on pure terror, utter despair, and physical torture. Poe brilliantly applied his personal experience suffering from mental illness to his canon of works, so readers become immersed in his senses of madness, obsession with death, and the supernatural.
Themes
Physical Torture - Unlike many of Poe's stories, The Pit and the Pendulum focuses on physical terror and torturing of the senses, much more so than the supernatural or psychological horror, for which he is revered as a master.
Religious vs. Political Persecution - Both the Spanish Inquisition and French Revolution are referenced, because Poe wants us to remember that persecution can be for many reasons. Maybe that's why he doesn't clearly define the reason for the sentence. Perhaps it's the mental persecution in the prisoner's head that's the real story?
Literary Elements
Obsession with Sound - Poe employs the art of vivid physical and sensory descriptions to keep his readers on the edge of our seats. We can feel the texture of the floor, the panic of the descending, hissing pendulum, and hear the sound of the gnawing rats loosening the straps.
Consonance - Repetition of identical or similar consonants are peppered through the story: "deep sleep," "hum of human voices," "descent of the crescent"
ALL CAPS - Poe's demonstrative technique of highlighting key words in all capital letters heightens our awareness along with the prisoner's: REVOLUTION, HOPE, FREE, INTO THE PIT
Important Quotes
Explain what the following quotes mean and how they relate to the story:
"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, of immovable resolution, of stern contempt of human torture."
"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..."
"It was HOPE--the hope that triumphs on the rack--that whispers to the death-condemned even in the dungeons of the Inquisition."
"With a more than human resolution I lay STILL. Nor had I erred in my calculations, nor had I endured in vain. I at length felt that I was FREE."
"'Death,' I said 'any death but that of the pit!' Fool! might I not have known that INTO THE PIT it was the object of the burning iron to urge me?"
"There was a discordant hum of human voices! There was a loud blast as of many trumpets! There was a harsh grating as of a thousand thunders!"
Discussion Questions
What is the meaning of the epigraph and how does it relate to important aspects of the story?
Why does Poe offer disjointed historical references, leading us to believe the prisoner is being tortured during the Spanish Inquisition (started in the 1470s), when General Lasalle's rescue would have been during the Napoleonic wars, no earlier than the 1790s?
Describe the chronology of the prisoner's ever-changing torture chamber, starting with pitch-black, all the way to its shrinking, molten form before his rescue.
Why did Poe choose a pendulum and not a guillotine, which was a more common instrument of torture? For extra credit: identify the many ways Poe describes the pendulum.
Analyze Poe's use of CAPITAL words throughout the story. Analyze their importance, meaning, and significance of order.
How is this story representative of Dark Romanticism? How is it representative of Gothic Literature?
Identify and discuss Poe's use of symbols in the story. Include the rat, candles, pendulum, pit and any other symbols you discover.
Discuss Poe's use of senses, particularly sound, as a literary device and its role in the prisoner's torture. Provide textual evidence.
Is there any spiritual component to the story, or is it all secular life and death? Be sure to discuss the use of "soul" references.
Explain the "King of Terrors" reference (second to last paragraph).
Discuss the "math" in the story-- calculate the initial cell's shape and perimeter, its volume based on what you know about the ceiling's shrinking height, the arc of the pendulum, its sweep (30 feet or more), and any other mathematical speculations that catch your fancy.
Paired Reading Suggestions
Compare and contrast the gothic literary elements in The Pit and the Pendulum with:
The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe - More of a journey of psychological terror, rather than this story's physical terror of the senses.
The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe - Compare the mounting dread and despair in both works.
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce - Uses the pendulum as a symbol representing both time and an instrument of torture and death.
Gothic, Ghost, Horror & Weird Library - Pick a gothic story by a different author and compare its genre, theme & literary elements of terror.
A Descent Into the Maelstrom by Edgar Allan Poe - Compare the epigraphs in both stories for tone, theme, and effect on the reader.
Useful Links
Author Resources
Genre Resources
Historical Context
- Analysis of the epigraph in The Pit and the Pendulum
- French General Antoine Charles Louis de Lasalle
- The Jacobin Club and the French Revolution
- Overview of the Spanish Inquisition
Teaching Resources
More Short Story Collections
Symbolism
Poe employs many symbols or allusions that are helpful to understand:
Rats - Represent hope and the potential for freedom when all hope seemed lost. The prisoner saw their potential; the vermin were transformed from assailants of terror to abetting agents of his escape.
Candles - Represent the judges and time; they turned from symbols of angels to "meaningless spectres" that will burn down as does any hope of escape.
Pendulum - Represents Time (Poe's mention of the Father Time mural makes this easy), and also mood "swings"-- from hope to hopelessness which "vibrate" feelings of terror.
Pit - Could be a symbol of Hell, the greatest torture of all to be burned in a molten pit of iron.
Spanish Inquisition & Judges - Could his persecution be a symbol of the narrator's mental illness? The morphing torture chamber, being sentenced on unknown charges, the inaccurate historical account, could be Poe's way of expressing the struggle, fear, and valiant effort to break free of mental illness.
Epigraph & Vocabulary
The Epigraph Sets the Tone
The Latin phrase at the beginning of the story is an epigraph. Poe chooses to write it in Latin, common for literature from the Renaissance through the 19th century.
Translation:
"Here an unholy mob of torturers with an insatiable thirst for innocent blood, once fed their long frenzy. Now our homeland is safe, the funeral cave destroyed, and life and health appear where dreadful death once was."
The "unholy mob of torturers" refers to the radicalized French Jacobin Club, which led the Revolutionary government named "The Reign of Terror."
Interesting Vocabulary
Surcingle - A side strap, usually running under the belly of a horse. In this case, the straps render the prisoner immobile.
Scimitar - A short sword with a curved blade; Poe compares the swinging pendulum to a scimitar.
Crescent - Describing the pendulum: "a razor-like crescent...designed to cross the region of the heart."
Insuperable - Two meanings implying both hopelessness and hope: 1) impossible to overcome, or 2) incapable of being defeated.
Inaccurate Historical Context
The story's historical references of torture span three centuries and two countries, which Poe mixes together for great dramatic effect. Poe expertly employs the technique of The Unreliable Narrator.
The Spanish Inquisition - Began in the 1470s in Spain to enforce conversion to Catholicism, with brutal torture for those who did not obey.
Toledo - Poe references this infamous Spanish Inquisition prison of torture.
The Jacobin Club - Assumed power in the 1790s after the French monarchy fell, executing enemies by guillotine during "The Reign of Terror."
General Lasalle - Served under Napoleon in the Napoleonic Wars and died in 1809. Could he really have been in Spain to rescue our prisoner during the Spanish Inquisition? Definitely not.
Did Poe purposefully mislead his reader, or was he demonstrating that the prisoner might not have a grasp on reality-- torture inside his head, rather than his physical body?
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