Comparing The Pit And The Pendulum And The Complexity Of Fear

Frank Herbert, an American science fiction author, believes that “Fear is the mind killer,” and this is just as true as it was when it was written 60 years ago. Fear is a topic explored through most every form of writing including Edgar Allen Poe’s The Pit and the Pendulum and Dr. Mary Lamia’s The Complexity of Fear.

Lamia and Poe write very interesting works on the idea of fear. In the fiction text, the narrator is made to endure a variety of tortures that pull at their deepest fears. For example, when they finally escape the pendulum, the room heats to an unbearable heat and the wall close, essentially crushing the narrator, so they are forced to escape to the hole which they thought was a death sentence, “I saw that two of its iron angles were now acute -- two, consequently, obtuse. The fearful difference quickly increased with a low rumbling or moaning sound.” In the non-fiction text, Lamia explores and explains the science behind fear and its effect on the brain, “...individuals who are trait fearful - those who tend to have personality characteristics

In The Pit and the Pendulum the narrator has various responses to the fear he is facing in the form of sweating, shaking, and nausea like “...but then, all at once, there came a most deadly nausea over my spirit, and I felt every fibre in by frame thrill as if I had touched the wire of a galvanic battery.” Similarly Lamia talks about how fear makes the body behave, saying, “...a person or animal might play dead or just “freeze” in response to being threatened; yell or scream as a fighting response rather than get physical; or, isolate as a flight response.” By talking about the physical aspects of fear, we can better understand the ways that fear can overtake a person. While both writings are similar in their description of the physicalities of fear, they differ in where they show fear’s source to