Summary Notes for "The Pit and the Pendulum"

“The Pit and the Pendulum” (Poe)

·       1^st person pov

·       Narrator is  given a death sentence

·       Images of ghosts, skeletons, death and hell

·       His captors put him in a dungeon & he knows they want to torture him.

·       As the narrator is trying to walk around the room to find its size and shape – the recognizes a hole in the middle

·        1^st torture – a pit in the middle of the dungeon

·       The narrator realizes that he had been completely mistaken about the room and that it is much smaller than he had thought it was

·       He falls asleep (passes out) and wakes up to find that he is strapped down to a wooden bed.  He is given spicy food but nothing to drink.  He then realizes that there is a steel crescent shaped pendulum swinging from the ceiling and it is moving closer and closer toward him.  (2^nd torture)

·       The narrator devises a plan to escape – rub spicy meat on his bandages and the rats will bite through it so that he can escape before the pendulum gets to his body

·       3^rd torture – walls are set on fire and begin to close in on him

·       At the last possible second the French army comes in and saves him – Deus ex machine “god from the machine”