Poe often chooses to describe the narrator’s sufferings in excruciating detail—but right at the end, he holds back, and never tells us what the narrator sees in the pit. How does the relationship between the seen and the unseen shape this story?

Why might Poe have chosen the Spanish Inquisition as the diabolical villains of this story? What does a backdrop of religious fanaticism bring to the tale?

Take a look back at the narrator’s early reflections on dreams. How do his ideas about dreams, sleep, and unconsciousness relate to the events of the story?