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Character Analysis in The Pit and the Pendulum

The Unnamed Narrator: “The Pit and the Pendulum” is told from the first-person point of view of an unnamed narrator, which allows readers to intimately experience the Inquisition’s horror and sense how the narrator is slowly losing grasp of reality. Like most narrators in Poe’s stories, the narrator teeters on the brink of consciousness and unconsciousness, sanity and insanity. The narrator’s use of language is constantly in flux and his sense of reality slowly fades, making his account of events unreliable. His mental and physical deprivation causes readers to question his reliability, which only furthers readers’ sense of trepidation as they read Poe’s story.

Character Analysis Examples in The Pit and the Pendulum:

The Pit and the Pendulum

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"In its size I had been greatly mistaken. ..."   (The Pit and the Pendulum)

The narrator, in his confused and dilapidated state, had incorrectly measured the space of his dungeon. After he fell the first time, he recounted the same circumference twice. As the narrator becomes more and more oriented with the space and with himself, he begins to see all the ways in which he mistook his surroundings. He now understands that the black-robed judges and the white candles he envisioned were just figments of his imagination.

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"So far, I had not opened my eyes. ..."   (The Pit and the Pendulum)

Up until this point in the story, the narrator has used auditory and tactile imagery to describe what he has witnessed in the pit—the strange sounds he overhears and the feeling of the sable drapes or the darkness that overcomes him. Sporadically, he has peppered the text with visual imagery to describe the the whiteness of the judge’s lips or the blackness of the pit. However, as the narrator readily admits, “so far, I had not opened my eyes.” The visual imagery, the narrator concedes, has been entirely fabricated in his mind, further eroding his credibility as a reliable, sane narrator.

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"I WAS SICK—sick unto death with that long agony..."   (The Pit and the Pendulum)

“The Pit and the Pendulum” is told from a first-person point of view. In effect, the reader experiences the horror the protagonist endures from a firsthand perspective, allowing the reader to witness the torture on a much more intimate level. This opening line also sheds light on the narrator’s mental and physical state. Throughout the story, neither the narrator nor the reader ever find out what crime he committed, or if he is even aware of what crime he is being punished for. Poe creates a narrator who is teetering on the brink of insanity. As the story opens, we encounter a narrator who is sick “unto death,” meaning that he is both physically and mentally enfeebled. His mental and physical precariousness causes the reader to consider his reliability.

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