Pit And The Pendulum Irony

The Pit and the Pendulum by Edgar Allen Poe, and The Lowest Animal by Mark Twain have many differences but one central theme. They both express the belief that the human race can be destructive. Both stories have very different settings. Poe’s story The Pit and the Pendulum takes place in a completely pitch black room. From lines 102 - 103 the narrator says, “the blackness of eternal night encompassed me”(pg.252). The narrator wakes up and tries to navigate and almost falls in a pit. He was put in the cell by the Inquisition for a crime. However in Twain’s The Lowest Animal the setting takes place in his thoughts. He describes how he conducted experiments with animals and men. “The fact stood proven that the difference between an earl and an anaconda is that the earl is cruel and the anaconda isn’t” (Twain, pg. 374). Twain believes men are greedy and selfish. Next, the structure of both stories is very different. The Pit and the Pendulum is a gothic and sad story. But The Lowest Animal has more of a realist view. Poe’s story is very
In The Pit and the Pendulum symbols would include a pit, swinging axe, and darkness. The pit and the swinging axe are both ways he almost died. “I supposed to be the pictured image of a huge pendulum such as we see on antique clocks” (Poe, pg. 256). Also, he woke up in darkness and didn’t know what would happen to him. The reader expects the narrator to die but he lives. In The Lowest Animal symbols would be men, animals, and a snake. From lines 40 - 43, Twain explains one of his experiments “In order to determine the difference between an anaconda and an earl if any I caused seven young calves to be turned into the anaconda’s cage. The grateful reptile immediately crushed on of them and swallowed it, then lay back satisfied”(pg. 374). Twain describes how animals and men are very different. He also compares a man to snake. Snakes kill and eat everything. However men kill for fun and