Torture, Unclean Madness: Poe´s Well

Abstract

In this text, the story ¨The Pit and the Pendulum¨ by Edgard Alan Poe is analyzed from a multidisciplinary perspective based on approaches from the social sciences, where an approach is made to torture in Europe, during the 18th century, revealing its underground and dark character, due to the distancing of people from their daily life as well as its extensive scope. From this position, the current situation of uncertainty that is being experienced worldwide and, specifically, in Mexico with the COVID-19 pandemic, an invisible enemy, is reviewed as an element of anguish that leads to rethinking of social practices of coexistence This, together with the comparison of otherness that as a country is going through with the disappearance of people, an aspect that damages and keeps family and friends in permanent distress. The perspective used to carry out this work was the aesthetic experimentation in front of an artistic work, in this case a story, to show the prevalence of the story, its archetypal links with an unspeakable current circumstance, through which, its possibilities as a reference are displayed educational and artistic. With this, the reading of cultural fragments is proposed as a strategy for the analysis and interpretation of reality.