The consequence of our lack of information regarding the narrator’s trial and sentencing is that we cannot establish his level of guilt or innocence. Part of the effect of the story is dependent on an assumption of the prisoner’s relative innocence, particularly in the contact of the cruelty of the Inquisition. The narrator’s release from the Spanish Inquisitors by the French General Lasalle at the end of the story suggests that he may be a civil victim driven to his doom as a result of worldly conflicts rather than sin, predominantly since he was saved by the general himself and not by a lesser soldier.
In addition, the protagonist’s inclination towards self-examination contributes to making him a compassionate victim rather than a justified