The Pit and the Pendulum

“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 first line of “The Pit and the Pendulum” flings us directly into the unfortunate narrator’s dread and horror. The lack of context here feels disorienting and destabilizing. All we know is that the narrator is a prisoner, and one who’s suffering terribly. The “long agony” and “sick[ness]” here seem more likely to be emotional than physical.

“And 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 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.” 

In this vivid passage, the narrator illustrates one of the deeper cruelties of fear: his terror also robs him of the power of his imagination. The candles, which might have been a symbol of heavenly consolation, become inert, uncaring objects in the light of his torment.

“He who has never swooned, is not he who finds strange palaces and wildly familiar faces in coals that glow; is not he who beholds floating in mid-air the sad visions that the many may not view; is not he who ponders over the perfume of some novel flower; is not he whose brain grows bewildered with the meaning of some musical cadence which has never before arrested his attention.”

The narrator of “The Pit and the Pendulum” draws a strong connection between death, unconsciousness, and dreams. Fainting, he insists, isn’t truly unconsciousness. Rather, it’s a way of coming into contact with a spiritual reality outside daily existence—one that feeds the poetic imagination. Unfortunately, a poetic imagination is a terrible thing to have when you’re about to be subjected to torture.