The Pit and the Pendulum.
The pendulum by Edgar Allan Poe involves the story of the man who is facing death in every moment. It is a thriller and is very imposing. The story is told by an unnamed narrator who talks about the experiences in a pit in Spain. The story is about how he manages to escape death when it was right upon him. It shows the emotions that he goes through and what he feels when he is looking death in the eye and his joys when he manages to escape from the jaws of death. The story runs through the emotions felt by a person that was about to die and was perplexed about how he should die but still had the will to survive. He goes through many difficulties in his bid to survive. Many very fascinating ideas strike him and he manages to pull things that he would not have dreamed. For instance, when he puts a mark on the wall to make sure he is not going round and round when he could touch the walls. He had the presence of mind to know that he will go round and round till infinity if the pit was circular and he hence left a mark on the wall. He similarly decided to jump off the pit than being squashed to death. That as a choice he would have never had to make in any other circumstance.
In this story, Poe shows an irony- an irony where a person becomes that what he hate the most. The captors of the narrator were the Spanish and in the time of the Spanish inquisition the church was against science and hence no scientific activities were tolerated. The main reason of the Spanish inquisition was to make sure science does not get over the church and the church maintains its respect and authority. Through the passage of the story however, the way they treat the narrator is very much similar to a scientific experiment.
Throughout the time frame that he is captured; there has always been a way for him to get out. He is firstly given food. Even though it is enough just to sustain him. He is given food. It is not necessary to give a war captive food if you are going to kill the person with cruelty. They always seem make sure that he lives; he does not fall off to the pit and manages to tangle himself in his rode which was perfectly fine till the very moment before he was going to fall off the pit. He says because he tangled in his own clothes but there might have been some external help associated with it has it was too dark for himself to see it anyways. This seems like an experiment to see how the narrator reacts when he thinks he is extremely lucky to survive.
The fact that they left the rats in the dungeon and that they left food, that the rats liked, to be reached by his left hand, was also very experiment-like. Why would you leave food when the person is about to be cut into two halves? It would be either to see if the person actually wants to eat when facing death or would he rather want to let alone and die. It also seems like their intention to see how he responds affirming the fact that the Spanish were acting as if in an experiment. The fact that they pulled up the pendulum the moment they realized he managed to escape is also makes it seems as someone is doing an experiment. Also the next step started right after they were done with one gives another indication of it being very much experiment like.
It also happened in such a way that every time he woke up, something was happening and when he did not there was nothing going on. He could have woken up when the people were actually tying him but he did not. He stayed as if someone had drugged him and did not want him to wake up before the experiment started. Also, he fell asleep whenever he escaped something. That is again an odd thing as how will he fall asleep every time there is something about to happen. That again looked very much like a scientific study.
Similarly, for the narrator who was from France and was pro-science became somewhat for belief and developed faith. We can see that through the story as he starts to let go. He thought it would be rather better to jump off the pit than be squashed to death this decision was based on a belief that he would have a relatively painless death if he jumps off the pit and then dies then if him. This decision meant that he did start to have belief. This is ironic again because they were fighting against the Spanish who were for belief.
Faith and belief is a human character that came out through this story. It is something that becomes really prominent when the narrator was someone who did not believe in god when he first started but slowly and gradually he had no option but to trust in god and move ahead. He was stuck in the dungeon all alone with no one there to help him through. Whenever he passed out; he seemed like he is going to sleep with no worries about his life at all. He also made a decision based on faith about jumping off the pit. This is very much similar to what we do in times of trouble. Whenever we do not know what to do we tend to leave things on god and not worry about things.
The other human characteristic is hatred. The amount of hatred that a person can have as torturing a person is more important that to actually kill him. The Spanish captured out narrator and tortured him. The purpose was to give him a slow horrible death; to make him suffer. They made sure he was alive and being tortured through the story.
Every day we can see people in churches, temples and in Mosques praying for better things. They are willing to sacrifice something they have to please the almighty such that they can get something that they are actually wishful for. This is all the reason of faith. Faith is something that gives you a power to do something in life. Whenever you know that is no more hope we always call upon God to come help us. This shows that when we are in absolute dire need of something GOD is the only one we call upon.
Similarly we have seen hate stories through the evolution of human beings. The most prominent example can be the holocaust by Hitler. He slaughtered one third of the Jewish population of Europe. We still can see so many hate crimes in the world. The number of hate crimes committed in the world is still at a very large number. The number of crimes committed in the united states in response to race during the civil war and later too has been really high. Murder and rape crimes during the Bangladeshi independence against the Hindus by the Islamic racialists were also examples of hatred that human beings can have.