1) falling into the pit
2) being sliced open by the blade/pendulum
3) being crushed by fiery walls closing in on him
In “The Pit and the Pendulum,”
by Edgar Allen Poe, the narrator describes three ways the captors attempt to
kill him. He first encounters a pit that
he almost falls into because he is captive in an area of darkness and almost
falls in because he could not see where he was going. After not falling into the pit, he drinks
something that was poisoned/drugged and caused him to lose consciousness. When he wakes up, he finds he is tied to a
wooden base where a pendulum slowly swoops down to slice him open at the heart.
This is the second way he is almost killed.
He manages to just barely escape by rubbing some meat on his bonds, and
some rats eat through the bonds making them looser allowing him to escape. After he makes this escape, the third way he
is almost killed is by the fiery walls of his prison closing in on him, which,
he feels is his captor’s way of enticing him to jump into the pit in order to
avoid being crushed by fiery walls.
