> Many of Poe's works center around a protagonist on the brink of insanity. In "The Pit and the Pendulum" the character in the story is tortured into near insanity with the constant threat of annihilation. "I was sick - sick unto death with that long agony; and when they at length unbound me, and I was permitted to sit, I felt that my senses were leaving me." The narrator, a prisoner of the Spanish Inquisition, continues the tale with his confused memory of the trial, the sentence, and his descent into darkness. Insanity befalls the man as he realizes the various tortures awaiting him, and the futility of escape. For, each time he thinks he has outwitted his executioners, he finds a worse death awaiting him. Poe is refuting man's assumption that he can predict and understand nearly every event that occurs in his life. As Poe's own life has shown, life is not characterized by an orderly sequence of events that are easily understood, but by total disunity and incoherence. Since man is predisposed into believing life is predictable and easily understood, he must be terrorized, as the character in the story into believing otherwise.
After the protagonist's misconceived notions on life are dashed, he is left with feelings of utter despair. For, he is nothing but a prostrate individual, surrounded by carnivorous rats and the encroaching pendulum that is forcing him into a gaping abyss. This scenario is not unlike Poe's own life. From an early age he learned that life can be nothing more than a series of misfortunes. The premature death of three women who were dear to him (his mother, his friend's mother, and his wife), left him alone and bitter. His bitterness turned to paranoia as he began to suspect other literary figures of trying to sabotage his career, and even kill him. All of these weights led him to drink, a vice that pushed him toward the abyss of death.
Many critics believe the objects of terror in the "Pit a...