Poe's Stories brief biography of edgar allan poe
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Short Story By Flannery OConnor
| The rats devouring of the narrator’s meal forces us to imagine what they will do to his body when he is dead. The rats fuelled only by their desire to eat. But again, the narrator shows his ingenuity and uses the rats to his advantage just in time. In each of these narrow escapes, Poe pushes the narrator right to the last possible minute or inch, pushes him to the bring of death. Responding to his escape, the pendulum machine stops moving and rises backup to the ceiling, and the narrator of "Pit and Pendulum" knows that his every move is being watched. He looks suspiciously around the cell. He notices that something has changed and tries to distinguish what. It becomes clear that the strange light is coming from a small gap between the wall and the floor going around the perimeter of the cell. He tries in vain to look through it. The dungeon transforms according to the narrator’s movement and the narrator interacts with it as if it is the enemy. Poe fills these walls and dimensions with a kind of human consciousness giving them a terrifying insight into the narrator’s fears. There has been another change in the room – the fiends and demons on the walls are now much clearer and brighter. The walls are glowing with these figures and the whole room is full of that metallic light. The atmosphere is quite unreal. Suddenly, the plans of his captors becomes frighteningly clear – the walls are closing in on the narrator of "Pit and Pendulum. As they get closer, the sensation and smell of heat emanates from the glowing walls. He knows that he will be pushed into the pit, and begins to wish for any death but the infamous pit. The antagonist in this nightmare remains unclear. The narrator’s faceless foe, the Catholic Inquisition, is represented by many threats all at once, the demon faces on the wall, the strange light, a mysterious source of heat, the walls closing in, and behind all of these dangers, the sensation of being watched reminds us that there is a more tangible human presence running the show. The narrator of "Pit and Pendulum" tries to withstand the pressure of the closing walls but soon he barely has an inch to stand on. When there is nothing more he can physically do, his spirit lets out a final, mournful scream into the pit. Ashe lets go and is about to fall to his death, the sound of trumpets wakes him. The walls retreat. He is saved A man enters, General Lassalle, who has come from the French army. They have defeated the Inquisition and the nightmare is over. It is rare for Poe to bring his narrator to safety at the end, but in this historical tale, the Inquisition is overcome and the mysteries of the pendulum and the pit are swatted aside by the strength of the French. Yet that did not make the narrator's brushes with imminent death any less overwhelming or exhausting. And while the French have abruptly saved the narrator from the inquisition, somehow there is little joy in it, and no celebration. Perhaps it is because, while the French have saved the narrator from this death, they can't, of course, save him from eventual death. THE BLACK CAT The narrator of "The Black Cat" begins by saying that we probably won’t believe what he is about to tell us. But he assures us that he is not mad, and because he is about to die the next day, he wants to recount to us these household events that have caused so much terror. He suspects that to some people, the events will seem commonplace, and their horror will be explained away with logic and science. Poe uses this foreshadowing message to increase the sense of horror for what is to follow. We already know that the narrator is on the brink of death, so the fact that the events are domestic and logical Download 0.58 Mb. Share with your friends:
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