In "The Pit and the Pendulum," why is the narrator held captive? Why is he happy that he falls on his face? How does he escape the pendulum? What...

We do not learn why the
narrator has been taken captive. When the story begins, he is in the midst of his trial, and
while he sees his judges speaking, he is unable to hear them. He is overcome with horror. Later,
he is so happy to have fallen on his face because, had he taken even one more step, he would
have plummeted to his death in the pit in his pitch-black cell. He says,

my chin rested upon the floor of the prion, but my lips, and the
upper portion of my head, although seemingly at a less elevation than the chin, touched nothing.
At the same time, my forehead seemed bathed in a clammy vapor, and the peculiar smell of decayed
fungus arose to my nostrils.

He realizes that he'd fallen
just off the edge of a very deep and circular pit, and this fall has actually saved his
life.

Later, the narrator escapes the pendulum by rubbing the oil and fat
from the meat left for him onto the ligaments that bind him beneath the weapon and allowing the
rats to come and gnaw on them until he is free....