Dark Romanticism in The Pit and the Pendulum

There are just a few main, distinguishing characteristics of dark romanticism that I found repeated over and over when researching the topic. These are as follows: dark romanticists believe people are naturally prone to sin and evil, they believe the world is dark, decaying and mysterious, they believe that nature reveals truth about the world but that when nature reveals things about life they are mysterious and evil, and dark romanticists didn't ignore evil, but they acknowledged it and the horror of it. I also believe an aspect of dark romanticism is exploration of the darker side of the spiritual realm and the way that it clashes with our own in points that we can see on certain occasions. The belief in the evil and supernatural is very evident in some works of dark romanticists.

The Pit and the Pendulum, written by Edgar Allen Poe, a distinguished dark romanticist, is a clear example of many ideas of dark romanticism. The first place in which this is showcased is in the mood as the story opens. The feeling of the story is immediately set with the foreboding words of the first sentence: "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." So already, as the story opens, the narrator has managed to settle an air of depression and hopelessness upon the scene. Later in the same paragraph the narrator describes his judges as though the very lips on their faces were some great symbol of evil and finality. Through these examples the author has illustrated the characteristic of the horror of evil(Poe).

The way the world is decaying and mysterious is illustrated when the narrator awakens in a dark, disgusting prison. Upon further exploration he deduces that he is in a circular prison with a deep pit in the center which it is intended for him to fall into. At one point rats enter his prison and attempt to eat his food. This disgusting filth and these vile living conditions show the decaying and mysterious nature of the world(Poe).

The prison the narrator is in is very inhuman in the way it punishes him. The pain inflicted upon him is both physical and mental. He is tormented both by the grotesqueness and unhygienic nature of the prison and the prospect of falling to his death or being sliced open by the scythe, physically, and he is tormented mentally by the constant, slow descent of the scythe and eventually the slow progress of the walls of the prison as they push him inwards towards the pit. The combination of these many torments, rather than a slow, quick death, prove that humans are naturally evil and prone to do bad things to one another(Poe).

The tale of the pit and the pendulum is both a horror story for the ages and a lasting example of the era of dark romanticism. As described above, the fundamental ideas of dark romanticism are all represented within the short story. It is truly a classic sample of the genre that is dark romanticism.

Works Cited

Poe, Edgar Allen. "The Pit and the Pendulum." Glencoe Literature. Comp. Jeffrey Wilhelm. American Literature. Ed. Columbus: McGraw-Hill. 2010. 263-273. Print.