N"the pit and the pendulum," the narrator explains, "i put forward my arm, and shuddered to find that i had fallen at the very brink of a circular ” how does this description of the narrator's predicament affect the story? it changes the narrator, in the minds of readers, from an unsympathetic figure into a sympathetic one. it adds suspense by introducing real, narrowly avoided danger into the narrator's situation. it forces readers to question the reliability of the narrator's account of events. it injects dark humor to the story by indicating that the narrator was saved by his own clumsiness.