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Pit And Pendulum character analysis

 

            In the novel The Pit and the Pendulum by Edgar Allen Poe the narrator, who had been accused of being a heretic, is sentenced to death. He is locked in a dungeon and tied up with a pendulum with a blade swinging over his body. He's going insane and as the blade passes over his chest, cutting through his clothing, he tries to escape. The narrator is a dynamic character with complex feelings and actions.
             At the beginning of the novel he is delirious, scared, and is unsure of what will happen next. He has no clue where he is. At one point the heretic says, "I was sick unto death. I felt my senses were leaving me."(156) The quote leads me to believe he is no longer living, or stuck in the afterlife. .
             Crazy? Maybe, but even so, he still had the power to notice change. After watching the pendulum swing back and forth he notices the distance shortens each time. The narrator is intelligent. He uses large words to describe simple things. In his dungeon it is too dark to see, so he gropes around to learn about his cell. When he discovers a pit, he tosses a rock in it to find its depth. .
             Delusional and scared, the heretic imagines pictures engraved and painted on his dungeon wall. Not only is he hallucinating, but also has a strong imagination. His mind baffles him. He is frightened and becomes lost in his thoughts. He later escapes the pendulum and becomes free and relieved with his mind cleared.
             The heretic is complex. He is a smart, intelligent man with a wild imagination. On the contrary he is scared, delusional, and ghostlike. The narrator is most definitely a dynamic character.
            


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