How Does Poe Create Suspense

Have you ever read or heard a story that made your heart hammer, your knees grow weak, and leave you jumping at shadows? Well, Edgar Allan Poe, a mystery and horror story writer, has written some of the most descriptive and eerie murder stories that can leave you quaking. One of his most sinister works is the “Tell-Tale Heart”. Edgar Allan Poe uses time, repetition, noises, setting, and imagery to effectively create a spooky and disturbing atmosphere in his works. These aspects creates the realistically scary feeling...but how does he apply all that in his writing?

Edgar Allan Poe creates a very suspenseful, exhilarating, and gloomy mood. Poe creates this by building up details little by little, giving you little tastes that gets the reader wanting to read more. Edgar Allan Poe writes “TRUE! --nervous --very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why will you say that I am mad? The disease had sharpened my senses --not destroyed --not dulled them. Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad? Hearken! and observe how healthily --how calmly I can tell you the whole story.”(P.1) This piece of writing is the very first paragraph of the short story The Tell Tale heart. This gets the reader asking, who is this man? What is the story that this man is trying to tell? This is what really makes Edgar Allan Poe’s stories create a suspenseful element that he depicts. Both of the stories have a very dark and gloomy mood. In the short stories there is murder and insanity involved, this really brings out the dark and obscure part of Edgar Allan Poe’s writings. A large part of how Edgar Allan Poe creates this type of mood is

In Edgar Allen Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" we question the sanity of the narrator almost immediately, but we cannot prove either way whether or not he is insane. I have read a lot of Poe's work although not all of it. His mysterious style of writing greatly appeals to me. Poe has an uncanny talent for exposing our common nightmares and the hysteria lurking beneath our carefully structured lives. I believe, for the most part, that this is done through his use of setting and his narrative style. In The Tell-Tale Heart, the setting was used to portray a dark and gloomy picture of an old house lit only with lantern light with a possible madman lurking inside. I think this was

Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” is a goosebump-evoking tale that follows one man’s twisted plot for revenge. Although carnival season is in full-swing above ground, Fortunato finds himself being lead to his death underground in the catacombs. His “past insults” will ensure that he will never again participate in such feasts and merriment; Montresor, his “frenemy”, will make sure of that. As if the story isn’t creepy enough, Poe uses dialogue and sensory details to produce a mood that is both suspenseful and dark.

The intricately placed details and glimpses of death in “The Cask of Amontillado” can establish a dark and thought-provokingly immersive environment for the reader to explore. Being able to make a connection with a story and digging in is a wonderful experience and is something every reader should be able to do. That is why “The Cask of Amontillado” is such an important story. Poe left out any extra details that were not needed and boiled the story down to the core essentials. This allows the reader to look straight into the heart of the story and immerse themselves in it

In this particular story, Poe decided to write it in the first person narrative. This technique is used to get inside the main character's head and view his thoughts and are often exciting. The narrator in the Tell-Tale Heart is telling the story on how he killed the old man while pleading his sanity. To quote a phrase

By using word choice, Poe created extravagant amounts of suspense. “The Cask of Amontillado” is a great example of how Poe uses literary elements, using them to depict a story of revenge and create a suspenseful mood. This is shown in lines 149 to 152 when the book states the following: “We passed through a range of low arches, descended, passed on and descending again, arrived at a deep crypt, in which the foulness of the air caused our flambeaux rather to glow than flame.” This quote uses imagery to describe the setting and uses sensory details to help create the suspenseful mood. This helps set the tone of the story which contributes to the overall feel of the story which can make or break a piece of literature. This is how Poe expertly uses literary terms in “The Cask of Amontillado” to help produce the suspenseful mood that improves on his pieces of literature.

Have you ever read “The Tell Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe? It is a short story about a man whose mental state deteriorates over time. The narrator loves the old man, however he has a deep hatred toward the old man’s vulture-like eye. This essay will be explaining the ways Poe keeps his readers in suspense. Edgar Allan Poe uses time, repetition, and descriptive language to set the pace, tone, and mood.

In “The Cask of Amontillado” Poe creates suspense through foreshadowing with words with strong connotations which creates anticipation in the reader. Within the short story there are multiple examples of foreshadowing throughout. The narrator “vowed revenge”(1) on Fortunato,but then further emphasizes his point by stating, “I must not only punish, but punish with impunity” (1). One understands the speaker’s intensity to fulfill his desire, while being unaware of the process. Poe creates a very dark and heavy tone using words with strong connotation. It expresses the passion and commitment within Montresor to complete the deed. From this quotation one can understood that the speaker will release his revenge intensely as the quotation also represents

Edgar Allan Poe uses irony to create suspense in "The Cask of Amontillado," to create a dark, dangerous short story. The protagonist, Montresor, plans to seek revenge on Fortunato, who insulted him, by killing him. Poe uses dramatic irony in the first paragraph by writing that Montresor is planning to kill Fortunato and get away with murdering him. The example of dramatic irony creates suspense, due to only the reader and Montresor knowing that Montresor is premeditating Fortunado's murder. Verbal irony is utilized to create suspense when Poe writes of Montresor and Fortunado making toasts, and Montresor saying, "And I to your long life" to Fortunado (Poe 347). Completely aware that he is going to murder Fortunado, yet Montresor toasts to Fortunado's

Edgar Allan Poe creates an atmosphere of fear and dread in his story “The Tell-Tale Heart” through the setting and the narrator. He creates these feelings through the setting, from the fact that it happens at night. Darkness creates an eerie feeling, because you cannot see what could be right next to you. Poe writes about this when he says, “His room was as black as a pitch with the thick darkness…” (Poe 304). From this one can conclude that the darkness is so thick in the room you can almost feel it. The darkness has secrets only the daring would want to know. Another way the setting creates fear is the fact that it’s in the old man’s bedroom. You are vulnerable there at its one of the places you would least expect someone to be. This is shown when Poe writes, “…and the

Throughout Tell-Tale Heart and The Raven, Poe uses diction and imagery to illustrate the setting. In the short story The Tell-Tale Heart Poe narrates the character to loathe the smallest items such as an eye color of his victim.

Mr. Poe was born in Boston on Jan 19, 1809 as the second child. His father soon abandoned their family then a year later his mother soon died, finally being an orphan at the age of three. Later on he went to go live with the Allan’s, who brought him to England and provided him with a strong education, but were resistant to his literary aspirations. He went to college at University of Virginia but, after a year he dropped out because of lack of money from gambling and not keeping in touch with the Allan’s. After, college and being discharged from the army he started writing most of his work plumbed the depths of human fears and desires, often allowing the stories to fade away then

An example of how Edgar Allen Poe uses flashback to develop the character and suspense is his description of how he mistreats Pluto, his beloved cat. He has a history of lashing out at his wife and several other animals but had always honored and respected Pluto. On one particular night, returning home quite drunk, the narrator feels Pluto is avoiding him. In an angry stupor, he grabs the cat with such force that the cat bites him on the hand. He feels that he has now been possessed by a demon. In retaliation to the animal’s primal instinct to protect itself, the narrator takes out his pen knife and cuts out one of the cat’s eyes. The next morning, the narrator feels guilt and remorse about his drunken actions. The narrator begins to drink

Poe used Grotesque, Guilt, and setting in his Gothic Lit. writings. The stories that Poe has written all these years are some of the most known stories. mainly because of how Poe describes as, and explains, the story so well it practically feels like you’re there inside the story or poem. Poe’s stories have many gothic techniques in them, but in the stories, The House of Usher, The Pit and the Pendulum, and the Black Cat he uses three large gothic techniques that really make these stories what they are and really come alive.