The Pit and the Pendulum is a short story which follows an unnamed narrator who has been imprisoned and sentenced to death by the Spanish Inquisition. His captors lock him in a dark prison where they torture him, tying him down to await a slowly descending scythe and, when that fails to kill him, attempting to force him into a pit where he will fall to his death. The tale instills fear in the reader as the narrator faces his unavoidable death, but nonetheless ends hopefully.
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