How do the narrator's changing states of consciousness affect the story?

In "The Pit and the Pendulum," Poe uses the narrator's changing states of consciousness to create mystery and suspense in the story.In the beginning of the story, the narrator is in a partial dream state. He hears voices, but does not comprehend or recognize everything they are saying or who the people are. This creates an aura of mystery right from the start as the antagonists to the man and the reason for his...

In "The Pit and the Pendulum," Poe uses the narrator's changing states of consciousness to create mystery and suspense in the story. In the beginning of the story, the narrator is in a partial dream state. He hears voices, but does not comprehend or recognize everything they are saying or who the people are. This creates an aura of mystery right from the start as the antagonists to the man and the reason for his death sentence are ambiguous. This mystery continues as the narrator becomes unconscious during the scene changes in the story. This allows Poe to never have to describe the people who are torturing the man. Because the story is more about the man's psychological reactions to his torture than about the people who are torturing him, the blackouts give Poe a way to take the focus off the man's captors and keep it on the man's reactions even as he adds more mystery to the story.

The man's varying states of consciousness also create suspense. As the man comes to consciousness the first time in the pitch blackness, the suspense is heightened by his wakening consciousness as he wonders whether he can be dead, and then whether he has been buried alive. As he explores the perimeter of his cell and then blacks out, the setback creates more suspense. When the man is on the wooden table under the pendulum, after perhaps days have passed, he experiences an "interval of utter insensibility." In a groggy state, he begins to feel hope and joy, but doesn't understand why. This builds the suspense. After several paragraphs describing a frantic, even unhinged, mental state, the man finds the "collected calmness of despair" sweeping over him, and in that state he is finally able to think. Again, the suspense builds through this section because of the man's changing mental states.