final english 2.docx - Death Alcoholism and Insanity 1 In...

Death, Alcoholism and Insanity 1
In my analysis of three poems by Edgar Allan Poe (The Pit and The Pendulum, The Black Cat
The Tell-Tale Heart), the narrative patterns between the stories is reduced to a type of psycho-
logical or physical torment. In all three stories Poe would make use of the unreliable narrator.
Poe’s brilliance was his ability to force the reader to question the nature of sanity, not just the
narrator but also the reader. He did this by creating horrible traumas upon the narrator while
placing similar mental and emotional stresses on the reader. Throughout many of Poe's works,
the "narrators' confessions reveal the irrationality of their attacks on supposed adversaries"
(Kennedy, 541). Many of Poe's short stories are effective in their portrayal of terror and mad-
ness precisely because the narrators of these stories cannot be trusted to tell the truth. The
reader begins to discover the extent from which trauma induces a loss of reality or a gradual
worsening of symptoms while experiencing their traumas. For example, the narrator in The Pit
and The Pendulum faces darkness and feelings of despair as a result of being locked away in a
dungeon and blindly attempting to escape his incarceration. The paranoia and mental deteriora-
tion experienced by the narrator in The Black Cat is primarily due to his excessive Alcoholism, a
failed grasp on his mental health and an inability to discern between truth and his perception of
truth. Many of his stories revolve around the idea of death being linked to a different emotion,
such as love and fear. For example, the narrator in the Tell-Tale Heart murders the old man
while conversely preserving the emotion of love for him and is preoccupied with the old man’s
Evil Eye. Death especially is a recurring element of all these stories, whether it be death of self
or others.
In “The Pit and Pendulum”, this classic gothic story takes place in Toledo, Spain during the
Spanish Inquisition. The narrator faces a court trial and hears the judge summon for his death.

Upon learning this news, the narrator faints into a pit after hearing of his fate. He soon wakes up
to find food and water waiting for him. He sips the water and comes to the realization that he
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has been poisoned and quickly loses consciousness. As the narrator wakes up, he finds himself
tied down near a pendulum which is slowly sinking towards him. Luckily one of his arms is not
secured and he is able to rub meat the men had left all over himself and all over the straps that
are holding him down. The rats that were circulating the dungeon begin eating the meat off of
the straps that had bound him. The narrator is free from the bindings and the dungeon’s walls
began to grow hot and close inward on him. The walls stop their descent, and go back; but the
narrator faints and falls into the pit only to be caught by a General Lasalle of France, whose
army had just taken over Toledo.