The Pit and the Pendulum
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40 free The Pit and the Pendulum trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Edgar Allan Poe's The Pit and the Pendulum is one of the most assigned short stories in English classes, and for good reason. In a few thousand words an unnamed prisoner of the Inquisition is condemned, thrown into darkness and pushed through one ingenious torment after another, and Poe makes the reader feel every one of them. This quiz follows the story from the opening trial to the last-second rescue. It covers the plot in order, the details of the dungeon and its machinery, the narrator's reasoning, Poe's imagery and word choices, the loose history behind the setting, and the film, television and music adaptations the tale has inspired. It is written for students revising for a class quiz or reading test, teachers who want ready-made multiple-choice questions with explanations, and Poe readers who want to see how carefully they were paying attention.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which animals gnaw through the strap binding the narrator in Poe's The Pit and the Pendulum?
Rats
Rats swarm over him by the hundreds, some pressing their cold lips to his own, while he forces himself to lie perfectly still.
Q 02Which feared tribunal sentences the narrator to death at the start of The Pit and the Pendulum?
The Spanish Inquisition
The Spanish Inquisition of Poe's tale owes little to history: the elaborate tortures he describes have no parallel in the real tribunal's records.
Q 03Which horror star played the tormented Nicholas Medina in the 1961 film of The Pit and the Pendulum?
Vincent Price
Vincent Price also played Sebastian Medina, a notorious agent of the Inquisition, and the film out-earned House of Usher, its predecessor in the series.
Q 04Which poem made The Pit and the Pendulum author Edgar Allan Poe a sensation in January 1845?
The Raven
The Raven became his most famous poem, and he later explained, step by step, how he built it in the essay The Philosophy of Composition.
Q 05After the pendulum fails, how do the Inquisition's agents try to force the narrator into the pit?
Red-hot walls close in
Red-hot walls close in until he has not an inch of floor to stand on, and he is toppling at the brink when the rescue comes.
Q 06In The Pit and the Pendulum, the descending blade is set to cross which part of the bound narrator?
His heart
His heart is the target, and he works out that the blade will merely fray his clothing for several minutes before it cuts flesh.
Q 07Which thirst-inducing food becomes the narrator's escape tool in The Pit and the Pendulum?
Spiced meat
Spiced meat was served deliberately: his water pitcher had been taken away, so every mouthful made his thirst worse.
Q 08In The Pit and the Pendulum, which painted figure, usually shown with a scythe, holds the blade?
Father Time
Father Time normally carries a scythe, so the narrator takes the swinging blade for part of the painting until he sees it move.
Q 09What shape is the razor-edged steel blade that swings in Poe's The Pit and the Pendulum?
A crescent
A crescent about a foot across, horns pointing upward, hangs from a heavy brass rod; the narrator also calls it a scimitar.
Q 10On waking in total darkness in The Pit and the Pendulum, what does the narrator fear he is inside?
A tomb
A tomb is his first thought, so he gropes forward with hands outstretched, relieved when they meet only empty air.
Q 11The Pit and the Pendulum author Edgar Allan Poe died mysteriously in which East Coast city?
Baltimore
Baltimore is where he was found semiconscious and in great distress in October 1849; the cause of his death has never been explained.
Q 12The Pit and the Pendulum author Edgar Allan Poe is widely credited as a pioneer of which genre?
Detective fiction
Detective fiction in English is usually dated to his 1841 tale The Murders in the Rue Morgue, which introduced the sleuth C. Auguste Dupin.
Q 13What does the narrator of The Pit and the Pendulum set down in the dark to mark his starting point?
A strip of his robe
Q 21In The Pit and the Pendulum, the cell the narrator first takes for stone masonry is plated in what?
Iron
Iron, or some similar metal, covers the cell in huge plates, and the seams between them are the angles he felt while groping in the dark.
Q 22When light finally reveals the dungeon in The Pit and the Pendulum, what shape does it prove to be?
Square
Square, and only half as large as he had reckoned: in the dark he had doubled back on himself and counted the same stretch twice.
Q 23Besides his head, which part of the bound narrator stays partly free in The Pit and the Pendulum?
His left arm
His left arm is loose only from the elbow down, just enough to reach the dish on the floor and lift food to his mouth.
A strip of his robe, torn from the hem, serves as the marker; the same ragged hem later trips him and saves his life.
Q 14What happens to the blade in The Pit and the Pendulum the moment the narrator slips his bonds?
It is drawn up and away
It is drawn up and away through the roof by an unseen force, proving to him that his every movement is being watched.
Q 15Which instruments are heard in the final moments of The Pit and the Pendulum, just before the rescue?
Trumpets
Trumpets sound amid a hum of human voices and a grating like a thousand thunders, the first sign that soldiers have stormed the prison.
Q 16In The Pit and the Pendulum, the narrator calls the pit a symbol of which dreaded place?
Hell
Hell is his own comparison, and rumor held the pit to be the Ultima Thule, the farthest extreme, of all the Inquisition's punishments.
Q 17What does the condemned narrator of The Pit and the Pendulum briefly see as angels sent to save him?
Tall candles
Tall candles, seven of them, stand on a table in the court; as he sickens they turn into spectres with heads of flame that offer no help.
Q 18Which city, famed for its sword steel, holds the dungeon in Poe's The Pit and the Pendulum?
Toledo
Toledo, whose steel was once rated the best in Europe, had a permanent Inquisition tribunal from 1485, and the narrator recalls dark rumors of its dungeons.
Q 19Unlike many Edgar Allan Poe tales, The Pit and the Pendulum contains no trace of which element?
The supernatural
The supernatural never appears: Poe builds the terror from real sensations such as darkness, thirst, heat and the sound of the blade.
Q 20Who catches the fainting narrator at the edge of the abyss as The Pit and the Pendulum ends?
General Lasalle
General Lasalle was a real French cavalry commander, nicknamed the Hussar General, who was killed leading a charge at Wagram in 1809.
Q 24What sound does the great blade make as it swings through the air in The Pit and the Pendulum?
A hiss
A hiss accompanies every sweep, and Poe echoes it in the prose with sibilant words such as cessation and scimitar.
Q 25What does the narrator of The Pit and the Pendulum decide about the last pitcher of water he drains?
It was drugged
It was drugged, he reasons, because a deathlike sleep overcomes him at once and he wakes bound to a wooden frame.
Q 26What does the narrator of The Pit and the Pendulum hear when he drops a stone fragment into the pit?
A splash
A splash comes only after many seconds of rattling echoes, telling him that the shaft is deep and ends in water.
Q 27Which feeling does the narrator of The Pit and the Pendulum say triumphs even on the rack?
Hope
Hope makes him flinch from every sweep of the blade, he realises, even though death would come as a relief.
Q 28Which painted figures, their colors blurred by damp, cover the cell in The Pit and the Pendulum?
Fiends and skeletons
Fiends and skeletons cover every surface, images the narrator puts down to the grim superstition of the monks.
Q 29The four-line epigraph that opens Poe's The Pit and the Pendulum is written in which language?
Latin
Latin verses head the tale, described as a quatrain written for the gates of a market on the site of the Jacobin Club in Paris; the market built there never carried the inscription.
Q 30Which director made the 1961 film The Pit and the Pendulum as the second of his Poe adaptations?
Roger Corman
Roger Corman shot it in fifteen days on rented sets; the torture device of the title appears only in the final ten minutes.