Edgar Allan Poe school project

Edgar Allan Poe

The Pit and the Pendulum

So my youngest son had a project due on this story this week and we finished it last night.

This is what we made =)

I used a canvas art frame and turned it to the back. The story is about a man receiving a death sentence from the court of the Inquisition for an unknown crime. He is placed in one of the dungeons of Toledo so we pained the canvas and frame grey then stamped black accents and covered it with crackle paint.

The narrator describes the horrors of the dungeon so we took some key elements of the story and recreated them in squares. This one is the sable curtains in a room with 7 candles.

The photo on the top is the sentence being given by the high inquisitor and the box on the bottom represents the number of footsteps he counted in his cell. I did not have a stamp with shoe prints so we made this one out of sponge.

In this box we placed a door that I added chain and a lock to. This represents the door to the prison that General Lasalle breaks down to enter the prison.

Rats come up from the pit to eat the food and in the end chew through his bindings, so we made these from clay. We did not have the right colors so after baking the shapes we painted them and added wire whiskers, jute rope tails. 

Here he is strapped to wooden planks with leather straps and a pendulum that swings slowly over his body inching its way toward him. He also had a plate of food and drink (poisoned) close enough to him to eat and drink. 

Thankfully I never threw away my box of doll house accessories! 

Hugs