In one descriptive and
horrible detail, the narrator addresses the judges who condemn him to death. He specifically
describes his impression of their lips, which become seemingly inhuman and oddly nightmarish in
his near-delirium. He says,
I saw the lips of the
black-robed judges. They appeared to me whitewhiter than the sheet upon which I trace these
wordsand thin even to grotesqueness; thin with the intensity of their expression of firmnessand
immovable resolutionof stern contempt of human torture [....]. I saw them writhe with a deadly
locution. I saw them fashion the syllables of my name; and I shuddered because no sound
succeeded.
Lips aren't white, as they usually have at
least a little pigment as well as plumpness. However, to the narrator, his judges' lips are so
white and thin, and when he describes them as "writh[ing]" they almost call to mind
snakes: a particularly upsetting image.
A second horrible image comes quickly
on the former's heels. The narrator says,
And...
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