"The Pit and the Pendulum"

"The Pit and the Pendulum" is a very that has many characteristics of Edgar Allan Poe's works, and it also has many of the characteristics of Dark Romanticism. "The Pit and the Pendulum" is a story about the Spanish Inquisition (Poe). A man was captured and because he did not admit to his guilt, which made the Spaniards automatically assume he was guilty, he was sentenced to death (Poe). He immediately fainted, and when he woke up he was in the prison (Poe). While he was in the prison, he was nearly killed by falling into a well, but luckily he tripped right before he would have walked into it (Poe). Then, his guards gave him drugged food and water so he was knocked unconscious and strapped him to a bed (Poe). He could move his head and his left arm to his elbow, where there was some spiced meat (Poe). A man signifying Father Time was painted on the wall above him, and Father Time held a pendulum of steel that was sharpened at the point and kept swinging lower, trying to kill the man (Poe). The man escaped this as well by rubbing some of the spices of the meat onto his bonds and letting the rats that were everywhere in the prison chew through the bonds (Poe). He stood and the walls quickly started to close in on him (Poe). He had no idea what to do, because the only place he could go was into the well (Poe). He was dropping in at the last second when suddenly the French general of Napoleon's army caught him, saving his life, and proclaimed that Napoleon's army had gotten through the Spanish defenses and the prisoners that were in the prison had been freed (Poe). The story ends rather abruptly there, but it shows many characteristics of Romanticism and Dark Romanticism. "The Pit and the Pendulum" shows the characteristic of Romanticism that explains that people should use intuition and feeling over their thought and reasoning. The man in the story tried to take the measurements of the dungeon room that he was in, but he confused himself while he was trying to reason it out and made the room seem twice as big as it really was. Much of the story just tries to convey some of the emotions of the man, because he feels a number of emotions, and the greatest of all of these was the fear and the terror that were constantly on his mind. He was very imaginative in the way that he escaped all of his bonds, and he had to come up with many different ideas before he found those that worked. He was also very lucky in that he tripped right before he would have fallen into the well, and I'm sure that the Romanticists would view that as against science in some way, again making it Romanticist. Poe's work talks about the importance of the individual and the individual's mind, and how he would not have been able to escape without some sense of self-worth preserving him through all of his hardships endured in the prison. "The Pit and the Pendulum" definitely showed characteristics of Romanticism.

Poe, Edger Allan. “The Pit and the Pendulum” In American Literature. Willhelm, Jeffory, comp. McGraw Hill. Columbus, 2009. Print.