Discussion Questions--The Pit and the

Pendulum

1. What is the narrator dreading when the story

begins?

2. How does Poe use imagery in the first paragraph?

3. What does the author use to symbolize angels in the

first paragraph?

4. What metaphor does poe suggest for the seven

candles?

5. What does he mean when he speaks of the dissent

into Hades?
6. Where is the narrator taken by the tall figures?

7. What does he see when he first opened his eyes

why is this frightening?

8. What are inquisitorial proceedings?

9. What is the name of the place where the story is at?

10. What fearful idea drives the blood in Torrents upon

his heart?

11. How did the narrator begin to examine his cell?

12. What caused the narrative to fall prostrate or lie
down and fall asleep?

13. How did the narrator discover the pit? Answer the
question by drawing how it is described that he
landed from his fall.

14. What was in the water they gave him? Why do

you think they would do this?
15. What is the general shape of his prison cell?

16. How did the narrator find himself when he awoke

this time? Answer this question by drawing what
is described when he woke and found that he
had been moved.

17. What was the painted figure that he saw above

him? What else did he see above him?
18. What lured the rats to the narrator?

19. What kind of figurative language is the author

using when he compares the pendulum to the
stealthy pace of a tiger?

20. How did the narrator attract the rat to his

bindings?
21. Where was the pendulum going to come in
contact with the narrator?

22. How was the narrator freed the first time? What is
the irony of this freedom?

23. How did his tormentors next try to kill him after the
pendulum?

24. What happens to the narrator at the conclusion of

the story?
KEY
1. He is dreading torture and death

2. He uses imagery by describing what the inquistory was like

3. The seven tall candles is a biblical allusion

4. He says that the candles are meaningless Spectresses with heads of flame

5. He is afraid of being buried alive

6. he thinks he is going to hell by going into the pit

7. The narrator is taken down into the pit
8. He saw blackness and he's afraid of what he can't see
9. They are the process of sentencing someone to the inquisition
10. Toledo spain
11. By feeling around the walls trying to get back to a peice of his clothing
12. The narrator tripped over the scrap of his robe and fell on his face
13. The narrator realized when he woke up that his head was dangling over a hole in the
ground
14. There were drugs in the water because they wanted him to be easy to move
15. A cube shape
16. He found himself in a slightly lit room on a plank above the pit
17. He saw the pendulum that represented the Grim Reaper staff
18. The sent of meat he rubbed on himself
19. He is using a metaphor
20. By rubbing the scent of meat over the bindings so the rats would come and chew them
away

21. On his chest over his heart

22. The rats free to him but he was still stuck in the cell
23. By trying to suffocate him with burning iron walls
24. He was saved by general llasel and the army