Q 01/05

Which animals gnaw through the strap binding the narrator in Poe's The Pit and the Pendulum?

A) Mice

B) Rats

C) Bats

D) Beetles

Answer · why

B) 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 02/05

Which feared tribunal sentences the narrator to death at the start of The Pit and the Pendulum?

A) The Roman Inquisition

B) The Spanish Inquisition

C) The Portuguese Inquisition

D) The Mexican Inquisition

Answer · why

B) 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 03/05

Which horror star played the tormented Nicholas Medina in the 1961 film of The Pit and the Pendulum?

A) Boris Karloff

B) Peter Cushing

C) Vincent Price

D) Bela Lugosi

Answer · why

C) 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 serie...

Q 04/05

Which poem made The Pit and the Pendulum author Edgar Allan Poe a sensation in January 1845?

A) Annabel Lee

B) The Bells

C) Ulalume

D) The Raven

Answer · why

D) 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 05/05

After the pendulum fails, how do the Inquisition's agents try to force the narrator into the pit?

A) Guards advance with pikes

B) Water floods the cell

C) Red-hot walls close in

D) The floor tilts downward

Answer · why

C) 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.