Can someone please tell me what the pit and pendulum represent in the pit and the pendulum

-- Anonymous, October 29, 2002

Answers

"Ms. Found in a Bottle" "The Maelstrom". The pit, the gulf,the abyss is the veretigo of final destruction. "Eureka". The ultimate inescapable death has a cosmic force or pull. In this story it is cluatrophobically inverted to an interior pit which the prison walls push him towards. As in the whole torture chamber theme the inquisition means the symbol to be Biblical casting the sinner into the pit of horror and damnation. That symbol is the intention of the torturer, a device of man.

As a mere symbol however, artificial and perverted, it can be defeated. The hero will escape it if only by casting himself by CHOICE against the closing red hot walls. This victory is followed by the outside rescue, much like the sudden dissipating of a bad dream.

Now compare this to the descriptions of the abyss and the trap in the first two tales I mentioned above. One man is trapped by the doom of the ghost ship and the second, a real man choosing to cling to a real cask figures out his escape too. A matter of beating time for the winners.

-- Anonymous, October 30, 2002