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The Pit and the Pendulum

Edgar Allan Poe

Start date: August 1, 2017

Finish date: August 31, 2017

Discussion: Short Story/Novella Collection

Why we're reading this: Short Story Classic-August 2017
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Short Story/Novella Collection

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What Members Thought

Dec 11, 2020 RJ - Slayer of Trolls rated it liked it

Shelves: 1001-books-read, read-short-story

jury found him guilty, gave him sixteen years in hell

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Oct 15, 2009 Laura rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001-books-you-must-read-before-you, read-2009, suspense-thriller, audio-books

Available at Open Source Audio (Internet Archive)

"The Pit And The Pendulum" was written by Edgar Allan Poe (1842). This recording is narrated by Grant Raymond Barrett.

A man finds himself damned by the Inquisition and is subjected to horrible torture, namely that of the razor-sharp pendulum. Can he escape this brutal death?
...more

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Feb 22, 2010 Laura rated it really liked it

Shelves: 1001-books-you-must-read-before-you, read-2009, gothic-romance, read-2010, e-books, british-literature, fiction-19th-century

"The Pit and the Pendulum" is a short story written by Edgar Allan Poe and first published in 1842 in the literary annual The Gift: A Christmas and New Year's Present for 1843. The story is about the torments endured by a prisoner of the Spanish Inquisition, though Poe skews historical facts. The narrator of the story describes his experience of being tortured. ...more

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Mar 16, 2017 Maggie rated it it was amazing

Shelves: classics, boxall-1001, short-stories, horror, usa

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Set towards the end of the Spanish Inquisition, this story tells of a man who is sentenced to death and put in a torture chamber. First in utter darkness, he finds, by tracing the walls, that he is in an enclosed room. He walks across the room only to find, by a lucky trip at the right spot, that there is a pit in the middle. Having escaped death, he falls asleep, and wakes to find himself in the same room, but with slightly more light. He is tied to a wall with a pendulum slowly descending on h Set towards the end of the Spanish Inquisition, this story tells of a man who is sentenced to death and put in a torture chamber. First in utter darkness, he finds, by tracing the walls, that he is in an enclosed room. He walks across the room only to find, by a lucky trip at the right spot, that there is a pit in the middle. Having escaped death, he falls asleep, and wakes to find himself in the same room, but with slightly more light. He is tied to a wall with a pendulum slowly descending on him. The bottom of the pendulum is razor-sharp, and would eventually slice him apart. His left hand is free to reach some meat, but this gets eaten by rats. As the pendulum starts to slice his clothes, he hits on the idea of rubbing his bonds with meat, and the rats chew his bonds and release him. He has escaped a second time, but now the walls start burning, and as the room starts to collapse into itself, he is forced into the pit. Just as he is about to fall. the hand of General Lasalle (a French general in Napoleon's army) pulls him out.

Having recently read The Fall of the House of Usher, I suspected that Poe's writing is best heard, not read. His words need to be savoured slowly, each image pictured in its lingering intensity or abrupt disappearance. So I listened to this audio recording of Pit, and whether because it's a better story, or whether because of the skilful narration and the background music, this felt like a far more suspenseful and creepy story.

An actual event is never as fearful as the anticipation of the event itself. It's like taking a roller coaster, when you feel more scared while queuing for the ride than when you're actually on the roller coaster. Poe knows this and he uses it well. Written in the first person, the reader is drawn into the narrator' experience, and you shiver as you're made to feel the suspense of the pendulum descending, bit by bit, while you imagine your own clothes being sliced apart, over and over by the swinging pendulum, knowing that in time it won't just be your clothes that it's slicing. Poe repeats words and phrases, but instead of being tiresome, the repetition has the tone of an incantation, serving to draw out the anticipated doom and build the suspense. In that way, Poe manages to create a story that is terrifying without actually featuring any death or gore, and his narrator survives to tell us the tale.

This story is set in Toledo during the Spanish Inquisition. It's not historically accurate as General Lasalle never actually went to Toledo, but his presence is symbolic. I don't know if Poe intended to convey a political message, but for the purposes of story telling the setting anchors the story and gives it realism. ...more

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