Before Reading Video link at The Pit and the Pendulum thinkcentral.com Short Story by Edgar Allan Poe The Lake Poem by Edgar Allan Poe VIDEO TRAILER KEYWORD: HML10-856 What breeds TERROR? Virginia Standards of Learning 10.4b Make predictions, draw What causes your heart to race and your palms to sweat? Perhaps inferences, and connect prior it’s a deserted alley, a snarling dog, or a shadowy stranger. In the knowledge to support reading comprehension. 10.4g Explain the following selections by Edgar Allan Poe, you will read about both the influence of historical context on physical and the psychological effects of fear. the form, style, and point of view of a literary text. 10.4h Evaluate how an author’s specific word DISCUSS With a large group, categorize the things that terrify choices, syntax, tone, and voice shape the intended meaning of the people. What distinguishes the fear of snakes from the fear of being text, achieve specific effects and support the author’s purpose. buried alive, for example? What categories do you come up with? 10.4m Use reading strategies to monitor comprehension throughout the reading process. 856 VA_L10PE-u08s1-brPtL.indd 856 3/29/11 11:07:28 AM Meet the Author text analysis: poe’s style A writer’s style is the particular way he or she uses language Edgar Allan Poe to communicate ideas. Some writers are famous for their 1809–1849 distinctive, innovative styles. This is true of Edgar Allan Poe, Living a Nightmare whose dark, suspenseful works helped create the genre Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, the son of modern horror literature. The following characteristics of traveling actors. Following Poe’s birth, his frequently mark his style: father deserted the family, and his mother moved to Virginia. She died in 1811, shortly • a first-person point of view in which the narrator expresses after the move. An orphan, Poe was raised emotional intensity, creating a tone of horror and terror by his mother’s friend Frances Allan and her husband, John, a merchant. In 1831, after • repeated or italicized words brief studies at the University of Virginia • unusual choice of words, phrases, and expressions and West Point, Poe, 21, sought work as a writer. Allan did not approve of Poe’s literary • long sentences or sentences with interruptions ambitions and, in time, severed all ties with • strange or grotesque sensory images his foster son. As you read, think about how Poe’s choice of a narrator affects A Valuable Legacy the tone of the work. The 1845 publication of his eerie poem “The Raven” made Poe famous. His success, reading strategy: paraphrase however, was soon marred by personal tragedy. In 1847, his wife, Virginia, fell victim Poe’s works can be challenging because they often feature to tuberculosis. Two years later, at, the unfamiliar words and complex sentences. One way that you can age of 40, Poe himself grew ill and died. make sense of his writing as you read is to paraphrase, or restate Although Poe’s life was brief, his contribution information in your own words. A paraphrase is usually the to literature was great. He is widely credited same length as the original text but contains simpler language. with the invention of modern horror and detective literature. Poe’s Words Paraphrase background to the story “Very suddenly there came back I very quickly regained Tortured Times to my soul motion and sound. .” consciousness and was able “The Pit and the Pendulum” is set in the (line 66) to see and hear. Spanish city of Toledo during the grim age of the Spanish Inquisition. Since the Middle Ages, the Roman Catholic Church had Review: Make Inferences authorized priests to try heretics—people who opposed the teachings of the church. vocabulary in context The priests, or inquisitors, frequently misused their power. Some suspects were Many of Poe’s words may seem unusual or old-fashioned. tortured, and those found guilty were often Review the list, noting any familiar roots, prefixes, or suffixes executed at elaborate public ceremonies that might help you unlock the meanings of these words. called autos-da-fé. word confound lethargy pervade Author list eloquent lucid supposition Online indeterminate pertinacity voracity Go to thinkcentral.com. insuperable KEYWORD: HML10-857 Complete the activities in your Reader/Writer Notebook. 857 VA_L10PE-u08s1-brPtL.indd 857 3/29/11 11:07:07 AM The Pit and the Pendulum Edgar Allan Poe Impia tortorum longos hic turba furores Sanguinis innocui, non satiata, aluit. Sospite nunc patriâ, fracto nunc funeris antro, Mors ubi dira fuit vita salusque patent.1 [Quatrain composed for the gates of a market to be erected upon the site of the Jacobin2 Club House at Paris.] I was sick—sick unto death with that long agony; and when they at length unbound me, and I was permitted to sit, I felt that my senses were leaving me. The sentence—the dread sentence of death—was the last of distinct accentuation which reached my ears. After that, the sound of the inquisitorial voices seemed merged in one dreamy indeterminate hum. It conveyed to indeterminate my soul the idea of revolution—perhaps from its association in fancy with (Gn’dG-tûrPmE-nGt) adj. the burr of a millwheel. This only for a brief period; for presently I heard no not precisely known or determined more. Yet, for a while, I saw; but with how terrible an exaggeration! I saw the lips of the black-robed judges. They appeared to me white—whiter than the 10 sheet upon which I trace these words—and thin even to grotesqueness; thin with the intensity of their expression of firmness—of immoveable resolution—of stern contempt of human torture. I saw that the decrees of what to me was Fate, 3 were still issuing from those lips. I saw them writhe with a deadly locution. a a POE’S STYLE I saw them fashion the syllables of my name; and I shuddered because no Reread lines 1–13, noting sound succeeded. I saw, too, for a few moments of delirious horror, the soft Poe’s use of repeated words and dashes. What and nearly imperceptible waving of the sable draperies which enwrapped the do these reveal about the 4 walls of the apartment. And then my vision fell upon the seven tall candles narrator’s state of mind? upon the table. At first they wore the aspect of charity, and seemed white 1. Impia . patent Latin: Here the wicked crowd of tormentors, unsated, fed their long-time lusts for innocent blood. Now that our homeland is safe, now that the tomb is broken, life and health appear where once was dread death. 2. Jacobin (jBkPE-bGn): belonging to a radical French political group famous for its terrorist policies during the French Revolution. What details create the 3. locution (lI-kyLPshEn): speech. frightening mood of this 4. apartment: room. illustration? 858 unit 8: author’s style and voice Illustrations © Cliff Nielson. VA_L10PE-u08s1-pit.indd 858 3/29/11 11:13:24 AM VA_L10PE-u08s1-pit.indd 859 3/29/11 11:13:03 AM slender angels who would save me; but then, all at once, there came a most 20 deadly nausea over my spirit, and I felt every fiber in my frame thrill as if I had touched the wire of a galvanic5 battery, while the angel forms became meaningless specters, with heads of flame, and I saw that from them there would be no help. And then there stole into my fancy, like a rich musical note, the thought of what sweet rest there must be in the grave. The thought came gently and stealthily, and it seemed long before it attained full appreciation;6 but just as my spirit came at length properly to feel and entertain it, the figures of the judges vanished, as if magically, from before me; the tall candles sank into nothingness; their flames went out utterly; the blackness of darkness supervened; all sensations appeared swallowed up in a mad rushing descent as of 7 30 the soul into Hades. Then silence, and stillness, and night were the universe. b b PARAPHRASE Paraphrase lines 23–30. What are the narrator’s had swooned;8 but still will not say that all of consciousness was lost. What thoughts immediately following his trial? How I of it there remained I will not attempt to define, or even to describe; yet all do these thoughts affect was not lost. In the deepest slumber—no! In delirium—no! In a swoon—no! him? In death—no! even in the grave all is not lost. Else there is no immortality for man. Arousing from the most profound of slumbers, we break the gossamer web of some dream. Yet in a second afterward, (so frail may that web have been) we remember not that we have dreamed. In the return to life from the swoon there are two stages; first, that of the sense of mental or spiritual; secondly, that of the sense of physical, existence. It seems probable that if, 40 upon reaching the second stage, we could recall the impressions of the first, we should find these impressions eloquent in memories of the gulf beyond. And eloquent (DlPE-kwEnt) adj. that gulf is—what? How at least shall we distinguish its shadows from those vividly expressive of the tomb? But if the impressions of what I have termed the first stage, are not, at will, recalled, yet, after long interval, do they not come unbidden, while we marvel whence9 they come? He who has never swooned, is not he who finds strange palaces and wildly familiar faces in coals that glow; is not he who beholds floating in midair the sad visions that the many may not view; is not he who ponders over the perfume of some novel flower—is not he whose brain grows bewildered with the meaning of some musical cadence which has never 50 before arrested his attention.