The Pit
Edgar Allan Poe's "Pit and the Pendulum" explores judicial corruption and torture during the Spanish Inquisition, while the updated comic Nevermore resets it in the modern era. How does the Iraq-war era effect the story's plot? Does your observation of the news and other media sources sway your thinking? If so, how? Is torture ever justified, or does torture let "all memory of freedom die . . . , smothered under a breathless weight of night"?