In “The Pit and the Pendulum,” the narrator is imprisoned in Toledo, Spain. He is condemned by judges of the Spanish Inquisition and awakens in a dark dungeon after fainting at his trial. The story never identifies his alleged offense, keeping the focus on his terror and desperate attempts to survive.
The Toledo setting connects Poe’s fictional ordeal with popular nineteenth-century ideas about the Spanish Inquisition. The narrator discovers a deep pit in the cell, is strapped beneath a descending razor-edged pendulum, and later faces walls that move inward toward the pit. He escapes each danger through ingenuity and luck, including using rats to gnaw through his bonds.
Poe’s historical setting is deliberately dramatic rather than strictly accurate. The story is loosely associated with the Peninsular War of 1808–1814, when French forces invaded Spain, and it ends when General Antoine Charles Louis de Lasalle’s troops capture Toledo. The tale was first published in 1842 in the literary annual The Gift, despite being dated as a Christmas and New Year’s publication for 1843. The city is sometimes confused with Madrid because accounts of alleged Inquisition torture also circulated in connection with Madrid.