In Edgar Allan Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum," a prisoner condemned by the Spanish Inquisition awakens in total darkness, narrowly escaping a fall into a deep central pit within his dungeon. Later, drugged and bound beneath a giant, razor-sharp pendulum descending slowly to slice him, he cleverly lures rats with his meager food rations to gnaw through his bonds, escaping just in time. His relief is short-lived as the dungeon walls then become heated and begin closing in, forcing him inexorably towards the very pit he initially avoided. As he is about to be pushed into the abyss, the French army captures the city, the walls retract, and he is rescued at the last moment, highlighting themes of psychological torture, ingenuity born of desperation, and the horrors of the Inquisition.

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