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The Pit
The narrator describes the pit as the most feared of the Inquisition’s punishments, despite its more unassuming nature when compared to the fantastical pendulum. On top of the literal pain that awaits the narrator in the pit, he fears it because it represents hell. The pit is a place designed to imprison those who are doomed to suffer torment for their sins, which the same role hell plays in Christianity. Notably, the monks resist actively pushing or throwing the narrator into the pit. Instead, they want the narrator to succumb to it himself, either by trickery or by making it seem like the less painful option. This distinction mimics how in Christianity Satan is believed to trick and persuade people to fall instead of forcing them outright. The monks need the narrator to damn himself to the pit, and thereby to place himself in hell. In another way of looking at this metaphor, because the inquisitors are meant to be enforcers of Catholic piety, in their eyes the narrator has committed a crime which brooks no redemption. In trying to convince him to fall into the pit and thus into hell, they want the narrator to symbolically acquiesce to their judgment of him.
The Pendulum
The slowly descending pendulum represents the narrator’s awareness of his own mortality. The ceiling panel that the pendulum emerges from is painted with a depiction of Father Time, who is often portrayed as an elderly man with a scythe and an hourglass. The pendulum takes the place of the scythe, which cuts short the lives of mortal men. Additionally, the narrator likens the pendulum to the hand of a clock, as if every movement is counting down the remainder of his life. The pendulum’s slow descent and the inevitability of its arrival at the narrator mimics the inevitable arrival of death. However, tied down as he is, the narrator is forced to confront this visual manifestation of his mortality. As the narrator states toward the beginning of the story, he has been sentenced to death, and he knows his end will come soon. The pendulum, up until he thwarts it, tells him when and how.
