The well and the pendulum

The Pit and the Pendulum (The Pit and the Pendulum in the original English) is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe that was published in 1842. It is considered one of the author's most famous stories and one of the most horrifying in horror literature, as it conveys the abandonment, disorientation, bewilderment, and hopelessness of a person who knows they are going to die.

The name of the story comes from a well located inside the cell where the protagonist is, where there is also a pendulum with a scythe that tortures him. In this work, Poe demonstrates his mastery over language and the most effective narrative techniques, to involve and make the reader feel like a direct witness to the overwhelming thoughts and experiences suffered by the narrator.

Summary

(Long and merciless is the torture here for the thirst for innocent blood, unquenched, unfed, now that the homeland is protected and the funeral grotto is broken, death was where there is now healthy life).

The narrator/protagonist begins the story, already exhausted, in a dark cell where the Spanish inquisition locks up the people it condemns, and where the torture it applies consists of loneliness, abandonment, darkness, cold and hunger. The tortured protagonist finds himself tied up in almost its entirety and experiences the anguish of knowing his next death as a pendulum descends towards him. After measuring the size of his cell, he discovers a deep pit with water located in the center of the site.

Sure that he will be killed by the blade at the end of such a pendulum, he is entertained by the trajectory of the object, but then an idea occurs to him, remembering that he has at his disposal some meat, food that he shared with the rats. With difficulty he manages to spray his body with a little food, and the rodents jump on him, eating and gnawing the rope that has him tied. Once released, the pendulum immediately stops and the man in question reasons that he is being watched, and that a perhaps worse death is already being prepared for him.

The room heats up its environment red hot and changes shape reducing its size, causing the walls to close in around the protagonist, and pushing him to the edge of the impending pit. The narrator finds himself in the dilemma of dying crushed or throwing himself into the pit that was originally going to be his "burial". When he finds himself with no more room to run, totally hopeless and about to throw himself into the pit, a hand grabs him and saves him. The hand is that of a French soldier who is led by General Lasalle, who had entered Toledo during the Napoleonic Wars and discovered the torture to which the victims of the inquisition were subjected.

Accommodations

• Several adaptations of history have been made for the big screen. The most famous is the 1961 version Pit and the Pendulum, which was produced by American International Pictures, led by Roger Corman and starred by Vincent Price and Barbara Steele. Although it is based on Poe's story, the film has a broader and little story tied to the story, and the title apparatus appears in the last ten minutes only.

• In 1991 Stuart Gordon led The Pit and the Pendulum, new adaptation of the story set in Spain towards 1492 and interpreted by Lance Henriksen, Jeffrey Combs, Tom Towles, Mark Margolis and Oliver Reed.

• The Pit and the Pendulum (2009), free adaptation of the story led by David DeCoteau.

In popular culture

• In 2007 the Finnish symphonic metal group Nightwish launched a song of almost fourteen minutes duration, called The Poet And The Pendulum. Inspired by Poe's work, the theme speaks entirely about the band's composer, Tuomas Holopainen.

• In 2010 the Spanish power metal symphony group Opera Magna made an adaptation The well and the pendulum on your disk Poe, which consists of other adaptations of poems and works by the American writer.

• In the horror movie Saw V refers to the work, with a trap of the pendulum created by Jigsaw.