Comparison Of The Pit And The Pendulum

What is fear ? Is it being locked in a cell so scary and dark a person can’t see what’s in front of them ? “The Pit and the Pendulum,” by Edgar Allan Poe focuses on the main character who undergoes a series of tough punishment for his opposing belief, against Catholicism, which leads him to being sentenced to death. In this darkness, the narrator finds himself being drugged to fall asleep, through food to wake up and repeat again. One of literature's exceptional standards is allowing the reader’s mind to discover subliminal points to undertake and to form their own ideas. Nathaniel Hawthorne reaches the reader to read in between the lines in the story, “The Minister’s Black Veil,” where the main character, Mr. Hooper, a town minister enters church on

The townspeople seem to be afraid of the mystery of the minister’s black veil. They are afraid because it is odd. Hawthorne states that, “the next day, the whole village of Milford talked of .. Hooper’s black veil..good women gossipping at their open windows. It was the first item of news that the tavern keeper told to his guests. The children babbled of it on their way to school,” (Hawthorne 240). This evidence points out that the people no longer have high regard as him as a minister. In addition, Mr. Hooper is actually afraid of seeing his own face. In the text, “At that instant, catching a glimpse of his figure in the looking glass, the black veil involved his own spirit in the horror with which it overwhelmed all others. His frame shuddered-his lips grew white-he spilt the untasted wine upon the carpet- and rushed forth into the darkness,” (Hawthorne 240). Mr. Hooper is afraid of his face because he believes that everyone has a veil, and until everyone doesn’t come to the reality of their sins, he will not cast his veil aside.