Thinking, imagining and feeling my way through the extraordinary story of The Pit and the Pendulum , I have concluded that Poe has touched upon a universal experience. Whether this state will transform our consciousness depends on whether we recognize the significance of it in our ordinary lives. A victim swoons under a declaration of judgment. Vertigo sets in, accompanied by the impairment of senses. Every faculty in his possession moves spatially downward.
Hearing is the first effected.
Throughout the tale the victim's physiological responses prepare him for visionary experience. Not wanting to hear the judgment pronounced, the man watches as the lips of his executioners silently mouth the syllables of his name. Distracted by the drapery, his eyes catch the flickering flames of the candles illuminating the courtroom. He looks to those candles with hope, finding within them seven angels, celestial counterparts to the hooded judges. As hope courses its way through the man's consciousness, the vision quickly dissipates, replaced by physical nausea, a galvanic or chemical sensation in his body.