“The Pit and the Pendulum” is one of the darker, more distressing tales in Poe’s Stories, perhaps because it is also one of the more realistic and historically-based narratives in the collection. That being said, there are still moments of extreme horror and fright that grip the reader. One of the ways that Poe effectively communicates the effect of the psychological terror inflicted by the pit and the pendulum upon the narrator is through hyperbole, as in the case below:
Could I have broken the fastenings above the elbow, I would have seized and attempted to arrest the pendulum. I might as well have attempted to arrest an avalanche!
The narrator uses hyperbole to emphasize his desperation to avoid the torture of the pendulum. He knows that lamenting his plight will not actually save him, and yet he cannot help but cry out and wish for the opportunity, for any opportunity, to defend himself. The absurd amount of strength he imagines—the strength to stop an avalanche in its tracks—is so ludicrous a wish that it becomes rather pitiful. The inevitability of his incoming pain is symbolic, for although he is eventually released from custody, he can never fully escape the memory and trauma of his torture, nor the inevitability of death. The sheer impossibility of the example he gives in this hyperbole demonstrates the severity of the narrator’s situation.
