# The Pit and the Pendulum - what was in the pit? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 15, 2014, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pit-and-the-pendulum-what-was-in-the-pit/693196 "2014-07-15T18:58:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2014, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pit-and-the-pendulum-what-was-in-the-pit/693196/21 "2014-07-16T01:24:35Z")
You saying **Bricker’s** in the Pit? ---
**Author:** ![P-man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/p-man/32/3606_2.png) [@P-man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/P-man)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2014, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pit-and-the-pendulum-what-was-in-the-pit/693196/22 "2014-07-16T02:01:03Z")
Liquid? Here’s what I think. I should preface this by saying that I grew up on a chicken farm. At one end of a row of cages, water dripped into a hole where chicken shit fell. We called it “the liquid.” Yeah, that’s what it was. ---
**Author:** ![Ibn\_Warraq](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e19b73/32.png) [@Ibn\_Warraq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ibn_Warraq)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2014, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pit-and-the-pendulum-what-was-in-the-pit/693196/23 "2014-07-16T02:37:06Z")
> [@C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](#): > > Sheeesh. I always took it to be some unimaginable horror, the worst thing you could imagine, and so Poe left it to the reader’s imagination. Giant spiders? Snakes? Slime and bog? Cannibals? Politicians? whatever. Agreed, I thought the whole point was that he had no idea what was in it. Speculating on what’s in the pit is like speculating on what was in the box in Pulp Fiction. This isn’t meant as an attack on the OP. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2014, 4:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pit-and-the-pendulum-what-was-in-the-pit/693196/24 "2014-07-16T04:19:19Z")
> [@Flywheel](#): > > A [vug](http://kindertrauma.com/images/art/pantsvugtrauma2.jpg). Can’t open the link; a big label says “Forbidden.” (Of course…do I really want to see a vug?) ---
**Author:** ![Octarine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/22d042/32.png) [@Octarine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Octarine)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2014, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pit-and-the-pendulum-what-was-in-the-pit/693196/25 "2014-07-16T04:33:29Z")
> [@susan](#): > > You saying **Bricker’s** in the Pit? Nah, not thinking of anyone in particular, just going for the general tone of the place. Which isn’t to say those 16-page threads aren’t a priceless tool for procrastinating. For some reason, I found it hilarious that the Wikipedia page for the story felt the need to point out there were “no historic parallels” with real Inquisition torture methods. You mean they _didn’t_ use magical shape-shifting, flammable rooms? Huh . . . ---
**Author:** ![dba\_Fred](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c37758/32.png) [@dba\_Fred](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dba_Fred)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2014, 11:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pit-and-the-pendulum-what-was-in-the-pit/693196/26 "2014-07-16T11:47:31Z")
[Lions and tigers and bears! Oh my!](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NecK4MwOfeI) ---
**Author:** ![Flywheel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/eb8c5e/32.png) [@Flywheel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flywheel)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2014, 11:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pit-and-the-pendulum-what-was-in-the-pit/693196/27 "2014-07-16T11:51:13Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > Can’t open the link; a big label says “Forbidden.” > > (Of course…do I really want to see a vug?) Try [this one](http://ittybittyblog.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/p1080761.jpg). (Or don’t…) ---
**Author:** ![C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b2d939/32.png) [@C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/C_K_Dexter_Haven)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2014, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pit-and-the-pendulum-what-was-in-the-pit/693196/28 "2014-07-16T14:22:30Z")
From _The Annotated Edgar Allan Poe_ by Stephen Peithman (1981): > [@](#): > > The room has taken on the aspects of hell. … What he sees is, of course, only a pit; but what he comprehends is annihilation. He cites several explanations: - Harry Levin [_The Power of Blackness_, Vintage, 1958] sees the tale as an existential parable: “…the agony of the prostrate individual, isolated and immobilized, surrounded by watchful rats, threatened by an encroaching mechanism, and impelled toward a gaping abyss.” - Marie Bonaparte sees the hero as caught between male (pendulum) and female (pit) and recoiling from both, indicative of Poe’s suppressed homosexual nature. He cannot let the scimitar “enter and split his heart – the scimitar replacing the phallus” and cannot enter the pit (female sex organ) either. - “In Jungian analysis, the pit or hole is seen as symbolic of the passage from temporal to nontemporal existence and for Poe that is frigntening merely because we do not know what lies beyond. While physical death by the pendulum is terrifying, the death of the self, as symbolized by the pit, is even more so.” - “Still another interpretation can be stated in purely Christian terms: only when the narrator admits that his predicament is beyond his power to escape, and surrenders himself completely to GOd, can he be saved.” > [@](#): > > …“The Pit and the Pendulum” can be read as a simple tale of terror, a parable of man’s existence, a representation of the emergence of the self, an unconscious reworking of Poe’s ambivalent sexuality, or as Christian allegory. Poe seems to offer something for everyone. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2014, 5:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pit-and-the-pendulum-what-was-in-the-pit/693196/29 "2014-07-16T17:25:38Z")
> [@Ibn\_Warraq](#): > > Agreed, I thought the whole point was that he had no idea what was in it. > > Speculating on what’s in the pit is like speculating on what was in the box in Pulp Fiction. > > This isn’t meant as an attack on the OP. I understand Poe’s deliberate ambiguity in leaving the pit’s contents up to everyone’s imagination. I just wanted to ask what everyone’s theory was. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2014, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pit-and-the-pendulum-what-was-in-the-pit/693196/30 "2014-07-16T17:33:46Z")
> [@Octarine](#): > > If Poe hadn’t been relatively nonreligious, I would have guessed the pit led to Hell - and the whole story could be symbolic of someone trying in vain not to sin. Failing that, I think he just banked on the fact that the human imagination is a scary, scary place. Whatever horrors the reader comes up with will scare them more than anything he could have said. It’s Hell, IMHO: - My cognizance of the pit had become known to the inquisitorial agents – the pit whose horrors had been destined for so bold a recusant as myself – the pit, typical of hell, and regarded by rumor as the Ultima Thule of all their punishments. The plunge into this pit I had avoided by the merest of accidents, I knew that surprise, or entrapment into torment, formed an important portion of all the grotesquerie of these dungeon deaths. Having failed to fall, it was no part of the demon plan to hurl me into the abyss; and thus (there being no alternative) a different and a milder destruction awaited me\* ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2014, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pit-and-the-pendulum-what-was-in-the-pit/693196/31 "2014-07-16T21:31:40Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > I understand Poe’s deliberate ambiguity in leaving the pit’s contents up to everyone’s imagination. I just wanted to ask what everyone’s theory was. A man wearing a black and white drama mask, underneath which is an ape mask, underneath which is his own face laughing at him. ---
**Author:** ![Scumpup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce73a5/32.png) [@Scumpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scumpup)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2014, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pit-and-the-pendulum-what-was-in-the-pit/693196/32 "2014-07-16T21:51:56Z")
Sodomy. Sodomy is what was in the pit. It was a pit of sodomy. ---
**Author:** ![Drunky\_Smurf](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drunky_smurf/32/449_2.png) [@Drunky\_Smurf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Drunky_Smurf)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2014, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pit-and-the-pendulum-what-was-in-the-pit/693196/33 "2014-07-16T22:05:13Z")
And gonorrhea. Surely Poe was inspired by the tale of Sodom and Gonorra. ---
**Author:** ![dracoi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/90db22/32.png) [@dracoi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dracoi)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2014, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pit-and-the-pendulum-what-was-in-the-pit/693196/34 "2014-07-16T22:43:51Z")
My interpretation has always been that the pit contained nothing that was particularly bad, and that the fear was all in the character’s own mind. I interpret it as a “We have nothing to fear but fear itself” kind of thing. Admittedly, it’s been a very long time since I looked at that poem in detail, but that’s what my essay in High School concluded and I got a good grade on it. ---
**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2014, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pit-and-the-pendulum-what-was-in-the-pit/693196/35 "2014-07-16T23:07:42Z")
Yeah, but there’s still that nasty not-in-his-mind pendulum to contend with. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2014, 12:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pit-and-the-pendulum-what-was-in-the-pit/693196/36 "2014-07-17T00:08:12Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > It’s Hell, IMHO: > > - My cognizance of the pit had become known to the inquisitorial agents – the pit whose horrors had been destined for so bold a recusant as myself – the pit, typical of hell, and regarded by rumor as the Ultima Thule of all their punishments. The plunge into this pit I had avoided by the merest of accidents, I knew that surprise, or entrapment into torment, formed an important portion of all the grotesquerie of these dungeon deaths. Having failed to fall, it was no part of the demon plan to hurl me into the abyss; and thus (there being no alternative) a different and a milder destruction awaited me\* There was a splash of water when the rock fell in the pit. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2014, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pit-and-the-pendulum-what-was-in-the-pit/693196/37 "2014-07-17T00:10:40Z")
> [@dracoi](#): > > My interpretation has always been that the pit contained nothing that was particularly bad, and that the fear was all in the character’s own mind. So he’d rather get burned by red-hot walls than fall into the pit? (which is what the story said) ---
**Author:** ![dracoi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/90db22/32.png) [@dracoi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dracoi)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2014, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pit-and-the-pendulum-what-was-in-the-pit/693196/38 "2014-07-17T00:30:27Z")
> [@susan](#): > > Yeah, but there’s still that nasty not-in-his-mind pendulum to contend with. True… but if memory serves right, he wasn’t actually hurt by any of the things that threaten him. They had varying levels of plausible threat (the pendulum being very plausible), but you could also argue that he was only harmed by his own fears. Maybe all of the tortures are rigged so that he always escapes instants after he passes out or instants before he thinks he’ll die? It’s too bad I wrote that essay before the movie Galaxy Quest came out. Remember the scene where they have to cancel self-destruct? They think they failed to turn it off and are sure they’re about to die, but it turns out that self-destruct always stops at 1 second, regardless of when you actually get to it. That’s just how it was designed. Anyway, it was good enough for a High School English class… which is not saying much. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2014, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pit-and-the-pendulum-what-was-in-the-pit/693196/39 "2014-07-17T02:51:32Z")
I’d have to re-read, but I don’t dispute your interpretation. ---
**Author:** ![C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b2d939/32.png) [@C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/C_K_Dexter_Haven)\ **Post date:** [July 17, 2014, 11:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pit-and-the-pendulum-what-was-in-the-pit/693196/40 "2014-07-17T11:46:57Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > So he’d rather get burned by red-hot walls than fall into the pit? (which is what the story said) Yep. The other tortures (red-hot walls and pendulum) are simply physical death; the Pit if total annihilation of the self. It’s an existential Pit. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pit-and-the-pendulum-what-was-in-the-pit/693196.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pit-and-the-pendulum-what-was-in-the-pit/693196.md?page=3)