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A review by crufts
The Pit and the Pendulum by Edgar Allan Poe
dark
emotional
mysterious
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
This is a little compendium of the work of Edgar Allen Poe, published by Penguin Books.
It starts off great, with Poe's famous poems (e.g. The Raven). Here we have some gems including The Bells and Ulalume.
After this we get into Poe's short (and not so short) stories, which are... less great. The Murders in the Rue Morgue is solid, but the rest are kind of meandering, and to me they seem pointless.
A filmmaker might call them "tone poems". Often they simply built up some horror scenario and ended at a horror reveal, with no broader context or point to it all. Most of the stories had less coherence than a fever dream, with obsessive and insane narrators who flitted from reality to fantasy and back again like the arm of a metronome.
I get the impression that Poe liked creating a particular aesthetic (horror, gloom and depression) again and again, and the plot and logic of a story was always going to be secondary to that. Other analyses say things like "Poe's The Black Cat is a study of the psychology of guilt" or "The Pit and the Pendulum is a study of the effect terror has on the narrator". But I don't want to read studies; I want to read stories.
If you like your stories to make sense, I'd recommend reading the poems but then skipping all the stories except for The Murders In the Rue Morgue.
It starts off great, with Poe's famous poems (e.g. The Raven). Here we have some gems including The Bells and Ulalume.
After this we get into Poe's short (and not so short) stories, which are... less great. The Murders in the Rue Morgue is solid, but the rest are kind of meandering, and to me they seem pointless.
A filmmaker might call them "tone poems". Often they simply built up some horror scenario and ended at a horror reveal, with no broader context or point to it all. Most of the stories had less coherence than a fever dream, with obsessive and insane narrators who flitted from reality to fantasy and back again like the arm of a metronome.
I get the impression that Poe liked creating a particular aesthetic (horror, gloom and depression) again and again, and the plot and logic of a story was always going to be secondary to that. Other analyses say things like "Poe's The Black Cat is a study of the psychology of guilt" or "The Pit and the Pendulum is a study of the effect terror has on the narrator". But I don't want to read studies; I want to read stories.
If you like your stories to make sense, I'd recommend reading the poems but then skipping all the stories except for The Murders In the Rue Morgue.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Death, Gore, Mental illness, Terminal illness, Violence, Blood, Stalking, and Murder
Serious warning for cruelty and violence to a cat specifically in The Black Cat. In fact, I would recommend just skipping the entire story.