The Pit and the Pendulum Study Guide Questions Answers

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 wroke 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 lurred 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? 25. Who ruled the Spanish Inquisition? 26. What religion did the queen and king decide to unite the country under? 27. The ________carry out the torturing. 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 25. Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand 26. Catholisism 27. Monks