The Pit And The Pendulum By Edgar Allan Poe

Humans often fear death, it is the fear of the unknown. People who die do not usually come back to life, so how are we supposed to know what is beyond the living world. Humans would do anything to escape their death, but can we cheat death really? In the short story The Pit and the Pendulum the narrator is trying to escape his inevitable death, but can death really be cheated?
The narrator finds himself trapped in a empty pit with no lighting. Now discovering that he is trapped down in the pit he is then trying to figure out how big the pit is or if he could find some kind of lighting. “I cautiously moved forwards, with my arms extended, and my eyes straining from their sockets in the hope of catching some faint ray of light. I proceeded for many paces; but still all was blackness and vacancy” (Poe). The initial conflict is first introduced as the narrator is trapped in a dark pit with no way out. Looking for anything that could possibly show him where was. In order to survive the narrator has to find a way to escape.
He is now strapped down against a wooden board while a pendulum is above him descending slowly towards his body. Rats suddenly start to swarm all around him, feeding off of his body like fresh meat. “Even then, while I gazed, they came up in troops, hurriedly, with ravenous eyes, allured by the scent of the meat” (Poe). The rising action comes into play when the narrator is trying desperately to save himself as he watches his last moments of his life. H The narrator is probably thinking to himself this is it, my life is coming to an end and there is nothing I can do to cheat death. The conflict continues to rise as rats are running towards him wanting to feed on his