The Pit and the Pendulum 2 page Lit Response

The Pit and the Pendulum, a story by Edgar Allen Poe, is about a criminal sentenced to the death penalty. After the method of death by drowning failed, his enemies tried to cut him with a swinging pendulum, not only affecting his body, but his mind as well. Poe wrote this story very well, his details were descriptive and pulled the reader in from the very beginning. As I read, I found myself becoming more involved in the story, I felt myself to be in the same predicament as the prisoner. Though Poe didn’t give valuable information about the main character, he described him enough for the reader to understand his demeanor. I saw him as a character that had been in similar situations before, liked a challenge, and thought things out carefully. He was calm most of the time, and that allowed him to escape with his life. Poe understood that character develop would lead to a good story, and he focused on this almost perfectly.
Annotations often help authors with their work. They are a response to the author’s good work and their shortcomings. Many eventually bring the author to be a better writer. As pointed out by Malloy, Poe used a few bible verses at the beginning of his story to convey “apocalyptic imagery.” This introduced us to the nightmare world of the main character. Malloy also pointed out several mistakes as well. One was the rescue of the main character, it wasn’t “foreshadowed in the tale nor congruent with its overwhelming oppression.” We must believe this to be true, because no one in reality would believe that the man in the dungeon would be saved. However, Malloy then points out that in the bible verses Poe himself alluded to, in the end was salvation. More mistakes were found in Poe’s writing. Hirsch found that the rescue represented “transcendental hope….inconsistent with the themes of many of Poe’s other stories…” With this inconsistence it is often difficult to understand an author. The reader doesn’t know what to expect from them at all. Hirsch then provided justification for this in a way. Still, the reader can understand the point Hirsch makes. An unpredictable author is sometimes unsuccessful, as faithful readers expect the same kind of work from a writer. Malloy goes on to speak of the psyche of the character and how effective Poe was at capturing emotion.
As there is always something missing from a story, there is always something missing from one of its reviews. I observed that Malloy appears to have made assumptions about Poe’s writing. She noticed he had an allusion to a bible verse, and based his whole story on mercy and salvation. I don’t believe Poe gave enough information for Malloy to base the conclusion of this story on anything. She took what she found first and used it throughout her whole review, possibly comparing it to things Poe may not have intended his story to be compared to. She compared the rescue of the main character by Lasalle as the Second Coming of Christ. Grand statements like this can’t be made by someone who did not write the story. Though Malloy uses some thoughts of other readers, Hirsch for example, she did not use enough. Most of the review was from her perspective, and the reader couldn’t get enough of someone else’s point of view.
Overall, the review was well done. Malloy used plenty of examples to back up her statement. She used a lot of context outside of the story itself, showing she did her research. As stated before, no piece of writing is perfect, not even the review of writing. An author is bound to make mistakes every once in a while because not everything they write will appeal to every reader. Reviews are meant to reveal the author’s mistake to them and make them better, and I feel that Malloy did this job very well.