Compare And Contrast The Pit And The Pendulum

In all of the Poe stories that we read the characters mental states seemed to have been altered due to the circumstances that they were in. Whether it be the death of a family member and incest in the House of Usher, the red plague in the Mask the Red Death, or the torture chambers in the Pit and the Pendulum. Of these three stories the most noticeable mental change is in the main character of the Pit and the Pendulum. The use of different psychological and physical torture methods over time makes the main character metal state change to the point were he is waiting for death. The mental state of the person in the Pit and The Pendulum was completely changed because of the things he went through. He seems to have given up any hope of escaping his prison cell alive and is just

This is a known form of torture that the CIA used at one point. This can be done in different ways in the Pit and the Pendulum it was done by putting the person in a completely dark room and letting him sit there with know access to light and no other human contact. Over time the effect of no other human contact and no sensory stimulation causes the person to fall into depression. We can clearly see this in the pit and the pendulum because as the story goes on the main character becomes more and more depressed and less optimistic about his chances of survival. I do not think that the pit or the swinging razor blade was necessarily meant to be the finale demise of the main character. This is because each of these would be a fairly quick death and this is not within inquisition usually did they wanted a slow painful death over a long period of time. What they were meant to complement the sensory deprivation as another form of slow torture. After he almost fell into the pit in the middle of the room, the book said, "Shaking in every limb, I groped my way back to the wall; resolving there to perish rather than risk the terrors of the wells, of which my imagination now pictured