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The Pit and the Pendulum and Other Stories Edgar Allan Poe 9780146000119 Books

Download As PDF : The Pit and the Pendulum and Other Stories Edgar Allan Poe 9780146000119 Books

The Pit and the Pendulum and Other Stories Edgar Allan Poe 9780146000119 Books

This product came in as expected and was in good condition.


Tags : The Pit and the Pendulum and Other Stories [Edgar Allan Poe] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. <strong>This award-winning collection of adapted classic literature and original stories develops reading skills for low-beginning through advanced students.</strong> Accessible language and carefully controlled vocabulary build students' reading confidence. Introductions at the beginning of each story,Edgar Allan Poe,The Pit and the Pendulum and Other Stories,Penguin Books,0146000110,mon0000575254,Horror - General,English fiction,Short stories,United States,Fiction,Fiction General,Fiction Horror,Horror

The Pit and the Pendulum and Other Stories Edgar Allan Poe 9780146000119 Books Reviews

I am sure all the words are in there but low quality print. They make it look like a penguin classic but don't be mistaken.
Waking up in darkness, fearing a live burial; groping in the darkness almost falling into a pit; bound to a framework under a swinging pendulum while rats rush for their midnight snack; sizzling iron walls squeezing together, but not to cook hamburgers. These could be scenes from Indiana Jones and the Dungeons of Toledo. And yet, The Pit and the Pendulum is classic Poe heart throbbing, adrenaline rushing, spine tinkling and hair raising suspense and terror. The story triumphs not only through its content but also its form; the words and sentences, like spectral needles and blades, pierce memory and imagination to engrave a tangy nightmare. Yes, before Stephen King, there was Edgar Allan Poe. Bon appetite!
At age 12 I was given my introduction to the world of literature by my mother who read me Poe's The Pit and the Pendulum. I can still vividly recollect living through the horrors of the chamber with the unnamed narrator, wondering why Christian monks would construct such a room and why Christian monks would inflict such torture. I still wrestle with a number of the story's themes.

Sadism
Why do such a thing? The story's torture chamber is not a makeshift construction slapped together; rather, with its pendulum descending in mathematical precision and its collapsing metal walls turning red hot, to assemble such a bizarre, intricate room would take sophisticated engineering. huge resources and lots of time, perhaps years. What does such a room say about the Western monastic tradition and the mentality of monks?

In `A Distant Mirror, The Calamitous 14th Century", author Barbara W. Tuchman richly portrays the psychology of these chaotic, disorderly times. For example, she writes, "In village games, players with hands tied behind them competed to kill a cat nailed to a post by battering it to death with their heads, at the risk of cheeks ripped open or eyes scratched out by the frantic animal's claws. Trumpets enhanced the excitement. Or a pig enclosed in a wide pen was chased by men with clubs to the laughter of spectators as he ran squealing from the blows until beaten lifeless. Accustomed in their own lives to physical hardship and injury, medieval men and women were not necessarily repelled by the spectacle of pain but rather enjoyed it. . . . It may be that the untender medieval infancy produced adults who valued others no more than they had been valued in their own formative years." Nowadays, we have a name for "untender infancy" child abuse. We also have a word for enjoying the spectacle of pain inflicted on others sadism.

Of course, the effects of child abuse and living in a society accepting sadism as the norm would not disappear when men became monks. What undoubtedly added fuel to this psychological fire was a religion and theology giving a central place to guilt and sin and thus turning men against their own bodies, and, more specifically, again their own sexuality. Reaching absolute conclusions about the mindset of peoples living centuries ago can never be an exact science, but it doesn't take too much imagination to understand how such a life in such a time would produce a population of dark, twisted people. Poe's tale takes place in 1820s not the 1350s, but how much did the psychology of the monasteries really change in these years?

Altered States of Consciousness
In the beginning stages of the narrator's ordeal, he conveys the following, "Very suddenly there came back to my soul motion and sound - the tumultuous motion of the heart, and, in my ears, the sound of its beating. Then a pause in which all is blank. Then again sound, and motion and touch - a tingling sensation pervading my frame. Then the mere consciousness of existence, without thought - a condition which lasted long." Yogis and Buddhist teachers talk about the `consciousness of existence, without thought', that is, the gap between thoughts. In such a gap between thoughts we are given a glimpse of the ground of being, pure awareness of space. This awareness can be developed through meditation or occasionally experienced through such things as hallucinogens, trance, or, as with the narrator of Poe's tale, extreme emotional states.

Fear
Adding to the fear of actual physical suffering, there is the fear we project with our minds and imaginations. The narrator's imagination is afire "And now, as I still continued to step cautiously onward, there came thronging upon my recollection a thousand vague rumors of the horrors of Toledo. Of the dungeons there had been strange things narrated - fables I had always deemed them - but yet strange and too ghastly to repeat, save in a whisper. Was I left to perish of starvation in this subterranean world of darkness; or what fate, perhaps even more fearful, awaited me?" Fear thrives on our projecting into the future whatever pain or agony we are currently experiencing, there is always the ever-present possibility our plight will become worse.

Hope and Good Fortune
The narrator is forever hopeful and it's the narrator's hope coupled with his fear and sufferings that gives the tale its emotional depth and breath . And, as it turns out, good fortune or what we more commonly call `luck' follows the narrator at three critical junctures in the tale. Oh, Fortuna, if we could all have such good fortune and luck at critical points in our own lives!
I checked out this book, along with several others, from my local library so I could "get my Poe on" before Halloween, and was so impressed with the wonderful color illustrations on almost every page. It contains a small but decent representation of Poe favorites. The copy that I bought cost me less than a dollar (plus the $3.99 S&H) and happened to be a library edition, so it is bound very nicely! Also it arrived promptly, despite the weather issues going on across the country. Count me as 100% satisfied.
Please be more specific about what you are selling. I was expecting a book not a cassette tape. I would've even been happy with a CD but not this.
100% Awesome edition!
This product came in as expected and was in good condition.