How Does Patricia Bray Build Suspense In The First Betrayal

Most prominent in Chapter XVI of Chains, Laurie Halse Anderson incorporates setting and disaster as a way to create suspense for the main character, Isabel, on her journey to inform the Patriots. In the middle of the night when Isabel makes her way to the snuff jar containing the keys to the drawer with the Loyalists’ names, she “held [her] breath as [she] lifted the lid…[and] forced [herself] to remain still and count to twenty” (Anderson 98). During this period when she is retrieving the keys, the author uses the library setting to create suspense through the risk required to do so. Therefore, since the moonlight illuminates a portion of the library, the risk of making sounds Isabel takes causes the reader to fear for the possibility of discovery.

What atmosphere or mood does the setting create (for example, darkness may create a mood of fear or unhappiness while light or bright colors may create one of happiness)?

Edgar Allan Poe is an American Gothic author from the 19th century. It is well known that Edgar Allan Poe was a master of suspense. The word ‘suspense’ is defined by the Oxford Dictionary to be ‘A state or feeling of excited or anxious uncertainty about what may happen.’ Two of Poe’s works are ‘Ligeia’ and ‘The Fall of the House Usher’. ‘Ligeia’ is the story of an unnamed narrator in love with his wife Lady Ligeia and how he copes with her death. ‘The fall of the House of Usher’ is the story of an unnamed narrator visiting his friend Roderick Usher at his house. Both of them are full of suspense and this is the main topic this essay will be focusing on. This essay will attempt to illustrate how Poe builds suspense in his short stories

In both the excerpts "Jams" and "Swimming with Nightmares" by Peter Benchley, the author creates suspense in many ways. The author utilizes descriptive words, character's choices, and dangerous situations for creating suspense.

“Works of literature often depict acts of betrayal. Friends and even family may betray a protagonist; main character may likewise be guilty of treachery of may betray their own values.”

In the Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien made use of light vs. dark to depict the Christianity theme, characterization, conflict between good vs. evil, and the setting of the story. The light vs. dark allows readers to interpret different key aspects of the novel and move into a deeper level of those intended influences by amplification.

In Macbeth, light is a symbol of harmony and order, but darkness is just the opposite. Darkness is the chaos and evil that results from a broken Great Chain of Being.

• What atmosphere or mood does the setting create? (For example, darkness may create a mood of fear or unhappiness, while light or bright colors may create one of happiness.)

Malmar McKnight’s frightening story, “The Storm”, weaves a violent storm and murder together to heighten the horrific fears that engulf Janet Willsom. “The Storm” is a combination of Mother Nature, Janet’s emotions, and her heartbreaking dilemmas. The eerie mood is revealed throughout the story. Figurative language helps the reader bring the story to life in his/ her mind. The author’s use of irony is devolved through Janet’s changed perception of the storm.

She takes advantage of her passion for the darkness as a way of persuading her side of the argument, placing greater favor upon the peacefulness in darkness versus chaos in the light. Also her description of her emotions when she is surrounded by darkness suggests that our busy lives in the light have taken relaxation away from our lives; darkness helps us fall back into simpler times and serenity.

Suspense is an important trait in many works of fiction. In David Montrose’s novel The Crime on Cote Des Neiges, he uses narration, digression and secondary characters to create suspense throughout the novel.

In the First Betrayal, Patricia Brave uses menacing diction, threatening details and terrifying imagery to create a mood of suspense.

The main themes of Edgar Allan Poe’s works are death, perversity, revenge and destruction. The settings he employed in the given short stories, especially in The Fall of the House of Usher and The Black Cat are Gothic. Therefore, naturally the mood of these stories would be dark and sepulchral. However, this is not a trivial employment undertaken to put the reader in a certain kind of zone.

Secondly, both Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne share a very similar tone through their writings that affects the perception of evil in their stories. For example, “And now at the dead hour of the night, amid the dreadful silence of that old house, so strange a noise as this excited me to uncontrollable terror”(Poe, 11) represents a nervous, yet saddening tone presented by Allan Poe taking in consideration the repetition of a statement made by the main character in “The Tell-Tale Heart”. As well as Allan Poe, Hawthorne presents a mysterious gloomy tone where the minister’s veil makes the readers question themselves about the main purpose for using the piece of crape. An example of this gloomy and overwhelming mystery tone would be, “When Mr. Hooper came, the first thing that their eyes rested on was the same horrible black veil, which had added deeper gloom to the funeral, and could portend nothing but evil to the wedding” (Hawthorne, 11) letting the readers know that all of the villagers gathered at the funeral disliked the veil, for it only brought more mystery and sadness.

When children think of darkness they think of lack of light which causes them to become scared. As we grow older, we begin to not only realize the lack of light, but the objects inside the dark which can be more frightening. We start understanding how darkness makes us feel. Darkness makes one think of unusual scenarios that are not real, but seems so real at that moment. Once we start believing in those scenarios, they start to overcome us and we no longer stay ourselves. There are multiple definitions of darkness and they all go with these two authentic stories, Heart of Darkness and The Dead. In the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, darkness is defined as: partial or total absence of light, wickedness or evil, unhappiness, secrecy and lack of spiritual or intellectual enlighten. Comparing, Heart of Darkness written by Joseph Conrad and The Dead written by James Joyce, each author brings out darkness and the living dead into the main character and shows how much it changes them for the worse and/or for the better.