In “The Pit and the Pendulum,” the pendulum’s blade is shaped like a crescent. Poe describes it as a foot-long arc of glittering steel, with the points of the crescent turned upward and a razor-sharp lower edge.
The narrator is strapped to a wooden frame beneath the descending weapon. With each swing, the blade moves closer to his chest, turning the pendulum into a mechanical symbol of measured, unavoidable death. Its shape also recalls a scimitar or the blade of a scythe, images associated with execution and mortality.
Poe’s story was published in 1842 in the literary annual The Gift: A Christmas and New Year’s Present for 1843. It places an unnamed prisoner in a dungeon connected loosely to the Spanish Inquisition, although the specific torture apparatus is generally considered fictional or historically doubtful.
Readers sometimes remember the device as a simple knife or straight sword because of film adaptations. In Poe’s original text, however, the cutting edge is distinctly crescent-shaped.