Dark Romanticism is a very dark style of writing that includes details of individuals being prone to sin and self-destruction. It also is very spiritual, meaning there are things like the devil, Satan, ghosts, vampires, ghouls, things like that. Another characteristic is they believe that nature is a very spiritual force. The world is seen as dark and very mysterious. When we look at The Pit and the Pendulum written by Edgar Allan Poe, we instantly see a dark effect upon the main character. The main character is a prisoner during the Spanish Inquisition. The whole story is about him being tortured and what it felt like. Thinking about being tortured the way he describes it, it fills me with fear because of how descriptive it is. Here is an example from the story; "It was not that I feared to look upon things horrible, but that I grew aghast lest there should be nothing to see. At length, with a wild desperation at heart, I quickly unclosed my eyes. My worst thoughts, then, were confirmed. The blackness of eternal night encompassed me. I struggled for breath. The intensity of the darkness seemed to oppress and stifle me. The atmosphere was intolerably close. I still lay quietly, and made effort to exercise my reason. I brought to mind the inquisitorial proceedings, and attempted from that point to deduce my real condition. The sentence had passed; and it appeared to me that a very long interval of time had since elapsed. Yet not for a moment did I suppose myself actually dead. Such a supposition, notwithstanding what we read in fiction, is altogether inconsistent with real existence;—but where and in what state was I? The condemned to death, I knew, perished usually at the autos-da-fe, and one of these had been held on the very night of the day of my trial. Had I been remanded to my dungeon, to await the next sacrifice, which would not take place for many months? This I at once saw could not be. Victims had been in immediate demand. Moreover, my dungeon, as well as all the condemned cells at Toledo, had stone floors, and light was not altogether excluded" (Poe). This statement and description is just so evil. I cannot even imagine what it would be like to think you are going to die from a sacrifice or the terrible torturing which is taking place. Then also, when Poe describes the dungeon as dark, it just sets up the creepiness of the whole scene.
"And now, as I still continued to step cautiously onward, there came thronging upon my recollection a thousand vague rumors of the horrors of Toledo. Of the dungeons there had been strange things narrated—fables I had always deemed them—but yet strange, and too ghastly to repeat, save in a whisper. Was I left to perish of starvation in this subterranean world of darkness; or what fate, perhaps even more fearful, awaited me? That the result would be death, and a death of more than customary bitterness, I knew too well the character of my judges to doubt. The mode and the hour were all that occupied or distracted me" (Poe). This is very stylish of Dark Romanticism. You see the talk of torturing the human soul, there is a dark dungeon. Then there are talks of death which is very dark. This story is just full of qualities of Dark Romanticism.
Poe, Edger Allan. “The Pit and the Pendulum” In American Literature. Willhelm, Jeffory, comp. McGraw Hill. Columbus, 2009. Print.
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