He thinks back to rumors he’s heard about the Inquisitorial dungeons. At last, he takes a few steps, and is relieved to find that he at least has a little space to move around in. He gets up to check if he’s in a tomb, but can’t bear to move, in case he finds that’s exactly where he is. Perhaps, he fears, they’ve decided to bury him alive instead. He’s sure he’s not dead-why, then, didn’t the Inquisition burn him at the stake? They were just about to hold a burning when he was convicted, and there was no reason for them not to throw him on the pyre. When he finally takes a peek, it’s exactly as he feared: There’s a dark emptiness so profound that it feels like it might suffocate him.Īfter his initial panic, he starts to think his situation through. He is terrified that he might even be surrounded by pure nothingness. He doesn’t know where he is, but he knows it can’t be anywhere good. The narrator awakes gradually, by fits and starts, and resists opening his eyes.
He dimly recollects being carried down deep into the earth by mysterious figures, the awful slowness of his own heartbeat, a pause accompanied by flatness and dampness, and then a fit of utter madness. A person who has never fainted, he says, has not fully experienced the outer reaches of the human experience, and isn’t the kind of guy who makes complete use of his imagination.Ĭase in point: even though he was unconscious, the narrator has memories of what happened next. Sleep and death, he reflects, must have a lot in common-and fainting is somewhere between those two, putting you closer to the mysterious world of the dead than sleep alone can. And the deepest sleep contains dreams-even if you don’t remember them when you wake up. Else there is no immortality for man” (247). He didn’t exactly lose all consciousness, he insists, for “even in the grave all is not lost. Here, the narrator pauses for a brief disquisition on what’s left of human consciousness when one is unconscious. Desperate, he turns instead to thoughts of the peace and quiet of the grave-until, overcome by fear and suspense, he faints. At first, he sees them as little angels, there to offer solace or even rescue then, a “most deadly nausea” comes over him and makes him feel that the candles are only inanimate objects, unfeeling and uncaring (246).
He’s immersed in the horror of this moment, hypnotically fascinated by the stark-white lips of his judges and the steady grind of their voices.Īs he casts around for some comfort, his eye falls on seven white candles standing before him on the table. The narrator, we soon discover, is a prisoner: Hauled before the Spanish Inquisition, he’s about to be condemned to death, and now has to suffer the agonizing moments before his sentence is passed. The story begins with shocking suddenness: “I was sick-sick unto death with that long agony” (246).
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