What one reviewer at amazon said about The Pit and the Pendulum:
I really enjoy very much Poe's short stories, mainly those where he gives us only a glimpse in some part of his main character's life.
"The pit and the pendulum" has almost no begginig and no end. It's the story of a man condemned to death by the Inquisiton. This death is not a simple one, since he is thrown in a dungeon with no light and lots of dangers.
This short story is full of anguish and told in an almost hysterical way. The reader discovers the horrors of the dungeon together with the main character. We don't know his name, we don't know what he did to be condemned, we don't know where he came from, we don't know nothing at all about him. And yet we keep turning the pages to see whet's going to happen next.
Poe had a dark style of writing; he could toy with his reader's minds as well as with his character's minds, and that's what makes him a master of romantic-gothic storytelling.
Read with the lights on.
Grade 9.6/10
Begins:
I WAS sick -- sick unto death with that long agony; and when they at length unbound me, and I was permitted to sit, I felt that my senses were leaving me. The sentence -- the dread sentence of death -- was the last of distinct accentuation which reached my ears. After that, the sound of the inquisitorial voices seemed merged in one dreamy indeterminate hum. It conveyed to my soul the idea of revolution -- perhaps from its association in fancy with the burr of a mill wheel. This only for a brief period; for presently I heard no more. Yet, for a while, I saw; but with how terrible an exaggeration! 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 immoveable resolution -- of stern contempt of human torture. I saw that the decrees of what to me was Fate, were still issuing from those lips. I saw them writhe with a deadly locution. I saw them fashion the syllables of my name; and I shuddered because no sound succeeded. I saw, too, for a few moments of delirious horror, the soft and nearly imperceptible waving of the sable draperies which enwrapped the walls of the apartment. And then my vision fell upon the seven tall candles upon the table. At first they wore the aspect of charity, and seemed white and slender angels who would save me; but then, all at once, there came a most deadly nausea over my spirit, and I felt every fibre in my frame thrill as if I had touched the wire of a galvanic battery, while the angel forms became meaningless spectres, with heads of flame, and I saw that from them there would be no help. And then there stole into my fancy, like a rich musical note, the thought of what sweet rest there must be in the grave. The thought came gently and stealthily, and it seemed long before it attained full appreciation; but just as my spirit came at length properly to feel and entertain it, the figures of the judges vanished, as if magically, from before me; the tall candles sank into nothingness; their flames went out utterly; the blackness of darkness supervened; all sensations appeared swallowed up in a mad rushing descent as of the soul into Hades. Then silence, and stillness, night were the universe.
An electrifying story; perhaps too demanding for the nerves of the average reader.
Poe is infamous for tales with death as an underlying theme; this tale has not escaped this touch. It's sparse with it's details of what and who; but, it grabs hold of the readers attention with a grotesque and morbid storyline. Readers beware, this, just like his other novellas, are not for the faint of heart...
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