Nonfiction: Two Authors` Perspectives of the Writer`s Craft
Question 2 • ARC English 10 Semester 2 CR/Summer
Read the selection below from the short story “The Pit and the Pendulum” by Edgar Allan Poe and answer the question that follows. I saw clearly the doom which had been prepared for me, and congratulated myself upon the timely accident by which I had escaped. Another step before my fall, and the world had seen me no more and the death just avoided was of that very character which I had regarded as fabulous and frivolous in the tales respecting the Inquisition. To the victims of its tyranny, there was the choice of death with its direst physical agonies, or death with its most hideous moral horrors. I had been reserved for the latter. By long suffering my nerves had been unstrung, until I trembled at the sound of my own voice, and had become in every respect a fitting subject for the species of torture which awaited me. Which excerpt portrays the narrator’s madness best?
Answer
A
“I saw clearly the doom which had been prepared for me . . . .”
B
“By long suffering my nerves had been unstrung, until I trembled at the sound of my own voice . . . .”
C
“Another step before my fall, and the world had seen me no more . . . .”
D
“[T]here was the choice of death with its direst physical agonies, or death with its most hideous moral horrors.”
Explanation
Choice B most clearly portrays the narrator’s mental collapse: prolonged suffering has left his nerves “unstrung,” and he trembles even at the sound of his own voice. The other excerpts describe his danger, near-fall, or the kinds of death facing prisoners, rather than showing his disturbed mental state as directly.
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