Oubliette
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An oubliette was a form of dungeon which was accessible only from a hatch in a high ceiling. To exit an oubliette was nearly impossible without outside help[citation needed]. The word comes from the French oublier, "to forget," as it was used for those prisoners the captors wished to forget about. Most prisoners were left to die of starvation, although in a few cases an oubliette was known to have a large spike in the center of the floor, which would result in more immediate death for those prisoners who were impaled by it.[citation needed].
The earliest use of the word in French dates to 1374, but its earliest adoption in English is Walter Scott's Ivanhoe in 1819: "The place was utterly dark—the oubliette, as I suppose, of their accursed convent." (OED) There is no reason to suspect that this particular place of incarceration was more than a flight of romantic elaboration on existing unpleasant places of confinement during the Gothic Revival period.
Although they may have been used as an inventive place of detention, their original purpose was to store grain.[citation needed]
There is an excellent example of an oubliette at the chateau in Meung-sur-Loire near Orleans in France. This consists of a submerged structure close to the castle. There is an opening at the top which reveals a large circular stone-clad pit, approximately twenty metres in depth, approximately five metres across, with sheer walls. It has a central hole in the floor, a pit within the pit, the lower pit being used for excrement and dead prisoners.
One example of what might be popularly termed an "oubliette" is the particularly claustrophobic cell in the prison of Warwick Castle, in central England. The access hatch consists of an iron grille secured by a hasp and (now) padlock.
[edit] Popular references
- Kurt Vonnegut metaphorically refers to a bomb shelter as an "oubliette" in his book Cat's Cradle. In the book, different types of torture devices are compared:
In any case, there's bound to be much crying.
But the oubliette alone will let you think while dying.
- In the movie Labyrinth, Jareth comments that Sarah is in an oubliette.
- The X-Files has an episode titled Oubliette during the third season.
- In the video game Metroid Prime Hunters, the alternate dimension in which the final boss, Gorea, exists, is known as the Oubliette. It is also the name of the last-unlocked multiplayer map, based off of the same area.
[edit] Other meanings
Oubliette is also used to refer to ice formations over lakes or other large bodies of water. As ice crystals formed, and air was introduced in the movement of the tides, tunnels would form under the ice.
