Edgar Allan Poe Lit. Response

"I saw seven golden candlesticks; and in the midst of the seven candlesticks one like unto the son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot and grit about the paps with a golden girdle" (Revelations). As you can see here, Edgar Allan Poe, in "The Pit and the Pendulum", used mainly the rhetorical device , imagery. He was able to vividly show and let the audience fell what the prisoner was feeling at that moment in time. The kind of suffering was unbearable . Jeanne M. Malloy, however, takes the idea of imagery one step further, and identified it as "apocalyptic imagery". In her analysis of "The Pit and The Pendulum", Malloy elaborates on this topic so thoroughly that it becomes the most significant main idea in her writing piece. Jeanne M. Malloy argues her main point of Poe's use of "apocalyptic imagery" by assessing the correlation in the events that occurred in the Book of Revelations to the events that occurred while the prisoner was going through his tough time. For example: The Seven Candles. In the opening of "The Pit and The Pendulum", the narrator sees seven candles and when he first saw them, he thought of angels wearing an aspect of charity and then turning into heads of flames. In Revelations, there were seven golden candlesticks who were also angels and had eyes as a flame of fire. Malloy felt that by Edgar Allan Poe including this in the opening of the story, he brings the readers into a nightmare world of punishment, dissolution, and death. He is introducing the audience into a world supplied with violence, pain and horror that the prisoner was feeling at that moment. Another correlation that was made by Jeanne M. Malloy is the fact that the Book of Revelation proclaims that that judgement and the destruction of the world will be followed by the creation of a new heaven and a new earth ; Edgar Allan Poe concludes "The Pit and The Pendulum" with blaring trumpets , "fiery walls and a thousand thunders". Malloy stated that a start of the second coming if Christ. Basically, there is a rebirth/resurrection. This ultimately goes back to the idea of apocalyptic imagery. Poe is implementing some of the things that occurred during the apocalypse into his writing. For example the darkness and the plagues. Edgar Allan Poe just chose to focus on the mental effects of things.

While Malloy may have had good arguments concerning Poe's writing, she still falls short in some areas. She definitely exhibited some flaws in her argument . Malloy , in her analysis, kept referring to Edgar Allan Poe's writing in "The Pit and The Pendulum " as inconsistent compared to his other pieces. It seemed like she was shunning the piece, because it was different. The flaw in her argument is that she failed to assess his personal life and situation at that moment in time that could have influenced his writing. There is no proof that she even took the time to evaluate his growth as a writer as well as an individual. Not having this makes her argument vague,because she is staying at the surface of the piece and really isn't asking herself why he could have veered away from his usual writing style. To make her argument stronger, she should have evaluated his growth and compare "The Pit and The Pendulum" to his other works and analyze how and why it was so inconsistent.