In "The Pit and the
Pendulum," Poe apparently had in mind the effects of unrelieved torture and suspense.The story begins
with the trial of the
narrator, as he sits before seven very severe judges; he is "sick—sick unto death," because the judges have an "immoveable resolution—of stern contempt of human torture." After swooning, the narrator awakens in total darkness; before opening his eyes, he imagines the horrors that await him. A few steps more and he would have fallen to a
horrible death.Looking upward, he sees a huge razor-sharp pendulum swinging in an arch, criss-crossing his body. Turning to survey the rest of the vault, he sees enormous rats running across the slimy floor. The vault and the bottomless pit are just as horrible as the very pit of hell itself might be. '''Death,' I said, 'Any death but that of the pit. As the walls are closing in on him, he realizes that he is being forced toward the very edge of the horrible pit. The narrator is rescued, and the torture of the Inquisition is over.As is often the case in Poe's stories, the first-person narrator is not named, and he is about to be punished for an unknown crime. But unlike many of Poe's stories, we do know the time and place of this story: It takes place in Toledo, Spain, during the Spanish Inquisition. Again, Poe's story has (1) an unnamed narrator, (2) is set in the distant past, (3) concentrates upon a single effect—the effect of terror or horror by means of mental suspense, and (4) is related to many other stories by Poe's concept that in sleeping, in fainting, and, ultimately, even after death, there is a "something" that still lives and is still active, some part of the human essence ("even in the grave all is not lost" is a main idea of Poe's "Ligeia," "The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Premature Burial," and other stories).The most unexpected aspect of the story is that it has a "happy ending"; the narrator is saved.