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    A Study Guide for Edgar Allan Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum"
    A Study Guide for Edgar Allan Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum"
    A Study Guide for Edgar Allan Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum"
    Ebook38 pages41 minutes

    A Study Guide for Edgar Allan Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Edgar Allan Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Short Stories for Students.This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Short Stories for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateMar 1, 2016
    ISBN9781535822411
    A Study Guide for Edgar Allan Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum"

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      Book preview

      A Study Guide for Edgar Allan Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum" - Gale

      10

      The Pit and the Pendulum

      Edgar Allan Poe

      1842

      Introduction

      Edgar Allan Poe's short story The Pit and the Pendulum was first published in 1842 in The Gift: A Christmas and New Year's Present for 1843, edited by Edward L. Carey and Abraham Hart of the publishing company Carey & Hart. A slightly revised version was published in the May 17, 1845, issue of Broadway Journal, a literary magazine edited by Poe at the time. The story is included in many anthologies of Poe's work, such as the Modern Library's Collected Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, published in 1992. Poe wrote the story during one of his most prolific periods; he was living in Philadelphia, working as a magazine editor, devising ingenious self-promotion schemes, and lecturing on American poetry.

      The story concerns an unnamed protagonist who is condemned to death by a tribunal of the Spanish Inquisition in Toledo, Spain, and the torture he undergoes following his sentencing. He is thrown into a chamber outfitted with several devices designed to kill him: a deep pit filled with water, a slowly descending swinging blade positioned to cut through his heart, and heated, movable iron walls. It is a romantic horror story with gothic overtones, in the vein of The Tell-Tale Heart and The Cask of Amontillado. The difference is that, instead of descending into madness, the protagonist keeps his wits about him and is ultimately rescued just as he is about to be forced to jump into the pit.

      Author Biography

      Poe was born on January 19, 1809, in Boston, Massachusetts, to traveling actors Eliza and David Poe. David Poe abandoned the family shortly after Edgar's birth and Eliza died in 1811. Poe was taken in by John Allan, a wealthy merchant in Richmond, Virginia, and his wife, Frances, although they never formally adopted the boy. Poe lived in England for several years as a youth. In 1826 he entered the newly founded University of Virginia, where he spent much of his time gambling and became estranged from John Allan. Poe dropped out of the university and enlisted in the U.S. Army under the pseudonym Edgar A. Perry, claiming he was twenty-two years old instead of eighteen. He found success in the army, attaining the rank of sergeant major for artillery and also publishing his first book, Tamerlane and

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