In Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum," which aspect of the narrator's torture -- physical or psychological -- is more terrifying to him?

Walter Fischer

Psychological terror, far more than physical, is central to 's writings, including
"."  Whether the imagined audible beating of "The Tell Tale Heart" or this
example of psychological terror from his poem "":

"I stand
amid the roar/Of a surf-tormented shore,/And I hold within my hand/Grains of the golden sand/How
few! yet how they creep/Through my fingers to the deep/While I weep -- while I
weep!"

Or, consider this line from "":

"Mad indeed would I be to expet it, in a case where my senses reject their own
evidence. Yet, mad am I not..."

Poe's work is replete with examples of
psychological terror.  In the case of "The Pit and the Pendulum," the psychological
torment of the.  The "pendulum" referred to in the title, of course, is a medieval
torture device employing a large swinging pendulum that, as it swings back and forth,
gradually...

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