Criticism of Pendulum

Blog bog bloggy. I really wish that my class had not read this poem out loud in class and just read this poem silently so that we could finish it in class. This blog is kind of a moral buster because i do not want to be doing school work on the last day of Thanksgiving break, but i am. I actually thought about not even doing this blog at all, but my responsibility caught up with me naturally. Well, anyway for this blog we had to read the poem "The Pit and the Pendulum" by the epic poet, Edgar Allen Poe. To begin this criticism, i would like to say that i actually did enjoy this poem a lot simply because it included torture (Poe). Now, not to sound sick, or twistedly twisted, but dark stories with torture always tend to catch my attention because it is like the worst possible thing that could happen to a person. It is also one of the scariest. I mean, in my opinion, that is like the last thing that i would ever want to happen to me. To be brutally honest here, being tortured would just flat out suck. There really would not be any other basic way to describe it (Poe). Anyway, on to the poem. In the story "The Pit and the Pendulum", it describes a prisoner who has been sentenced to death. The author, Poe, never actually gives a reason why the prisoner has been sentenced to death (Poe). the author basically leaves that up for the reader to decide. But anyway, the prisoner goes into his cell and tries to avoid death by having rats chew ropes that are holding him down while a pendulum with a blade is getting lower and lower. One of the things that i like about this part is the kind of description that Poe uses when the man is getting closer and closer to death. I really like how Poe describes this moment as he states how worried the man is and the thoughts that are going through his head (Poe). The thing that i liked the most about the poem "The Pit and the Pendulum" was how the author, Poe, changes the mood so much throughout the story. For example, as a reader, i really found it interesting how Poe changed the mood from when the prisoner saw his cell for the first time, to the time when he was almost about to fall into the pit. For example, at the point when the character sees his cell for the first time, the tone of the story is kind of curious. but slowly, Poe really tends to change the tone of the story without the reader even noticing. It is kind of amazing because at the end of the story all hope is basically gone for the main character (Poe). The character escapes the first death trap that he is put into, but then he is just put into another one when the walls start closing in. That is what i liked about the story. (Poe)


Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Pit and the Pendulum” American Literature. Comp. Wilhelm, Jeffory. Columbus 2009.