Matheson's Use Of Suspense In Literature

In “The Pit and the Pendulum”, the atmosphere is dark and unsettling. In addition to the setting and characters, there are various other factors that give the story a creepy feel to it. Furthermore, the narrator’s thoughts and descriptions add to the ominous mood of the story. For example, the tale states, “By long suffering my nerves had been unstrung, until I trembled at the sound of my own voice, and had become in every respect a fitting subject for the species of torture which awaited me” (Poe 5). At this point in the story, the narrator, falling into his torturers’ trap, tips on the verge of insanity and begins to lose hope. The reader can easily picture the narrator, cowering against the wall, eyes wide, flinching at the slightest of sounds. Therefore, along with the horrifying aspects of the torture chamber, the unstable narrator and his thoughts create a foreboding and macabre feeling characteristic to gothic

Suspense is a detail that many horror writer use to catch the attention of many readers and keep them holding on till the end. Just as W.F. Harvey does when creating suspense in his story August Heat. Mr. Harvey used three methods to create his suspense for his story, foreshadowing, withholding information, and reversal. With these three methods he is able to make the reader feel like, “ We may even hold our breath without realizing it as we read on eagerly to find out how the story ends”(Source 1).

Edgar Allen Poe’s The Pit and the Pendulum uses horror and suspicion to build up not only the storyline, but the persona of the narrator in which is also the prisoner. The characteristics of the prisoner ties within the story to create trippy feelings of fear and unassertiveness of whether or not he is truly safe. From the trials that the prisoner has faced, his characteristic of resourcefulness, pessimistic, and terror are revealed and play a salient part of his slick escape.

feel isolated and afraid. Moreover, the narrator of “The Pit and the Pendulum” also experiences

The temporal setting “oppress the character with the shape of a pendulum” (3) He fears its deadly velocity which represents his final hours of life. He feels terror of the doom that will “cut” his time on earth. As everyone knows, this symbolizes that death is inevitable.

People reads books and they get their captured by the suspense the authors use to write their stories. Suspense is a key point for most readers it keeps them reading the book to see what happens next. Both Edgar Allan Poe and Richard Connell are very good authors that use a lot of suspense throughout their short stories. Poe’s “Cask of Amontillado” and Connell’s “The Most Dangerous Game” are two stories full of suspense. It’s unpredictable, surprising that we can’t figure out what happens next. .Through conflict, setting, and diction Poe and Connell are able to build suspense.

The soldier also says that the pendulum “swung through the air” (Poe 274). The movement of the pendulum is similar to a clock, which goes along with the theme that the pendulum symbolizes time. Depending on how low the pendulum is, the life of the soldier is slowly getting closer to ending. The pendulum provides imminent death just like hell provides imminent and lasting torture. Watching the pendulum as it descends closer to him tortures the soldier mentally as if he is in hell. When the soldier uses the rats to save himself from the pendulum, it reminds the reader of hell because rodents are imagined to be in hell. The pendulum is symbolic of a clock and life ending, making it a key element in the idea of the story being read as a descent into hell.

In Edgar Allan Poe’s story, “The Pit and the Pendulum.” poe uses the elements of unknowingness, fear, and fight or flight, descriptive words to add suspense to the story. The man within the story is being sentenced to death because of his faith, he is found guilty and then taken to a duongen and tortured, he is put through 3 different ways of tortures before a french general saves him. First when he is laying on the stone table he decides to do this, ¨At length, with a wild desperation at heart, I quickly unclosed my eyes, my worst thoughts, then, were confirmed¨ (Poe #3). The previous sentence shows that he was fearful of the situation he is in. Second when he now knows he can't see he does this, ¨Such a supposition, notwithstanding what we

Finally both authors’ stories are rife with symbolism, specifically dealing with the inevitability of time and age. In “The Pit and the Pendulum” the abyss in the center of the dungeon and the swinging, bladed pendulum represent time. The blade gets closer and closer to the helpless victim and even when he is successful in escaping the pendulum, there is another torture in store. The torture – time- is “most unrelenting.” (9) He cannot avoid his impending death.

Authors are good at making things pretty suspenseful. Authors create suspense by coming up with creepy twisted stories or writing about real ones. A suspenseful story is made with disturbing background stories that end up having a major twist at the end. Like in the story, “The Pedestrian,” by Bradbury, where at the end of the story the car said it was taking him to a Psychiatric Centre for Research on Regressive Tendencies. Then the main character Leonard Mead said, “That’s my house.”

The pendulum is working like a hypnotist to the narrator, he is not worrying about death, but rather is in awe by motion of it, as he explains,

As he is doing this the pendulum is increasing its speed and he decides that is the way he is going to executed, but as he stares at the pendulum he realizes his executioners were going to kill him with the pit, but decided otherwise when the narrator discovered it. As soon as the rats chew off the ropes that bind him the pendulum rises quickly up into the ceiling and he feels suspicious that he is being watched due to the pendulum rising back to the ceiling. When a pair of mysterious eyes start closing in on the narrator the French army barge into his cell and the French general pulls him back from falling into the pit. This short story shows how death surrounded the narrator at every turn and that was the main torture, not just the pit and the

The narrator describes the pendulum as a “...painted figure of Time as he is commonly represented,”(866) this reveals that he looks at the pendulum in a similar way to one on a grandfather clock. Poe also uses this to represent Father Time, who is shown with a timekeeping device, such as a hourglass. When the sand runs out, which is illustrated by the pendulum slowly descending, the person’s time has run out and they die. After he sees that the pendulum is a scythe, it starts to represent death to him. The scythe has been commonly used to represent death, such as in the grim reaper, who brings death.

In a true horror story, the feeling of terror is often created by suspense. Suspense is the anticipation and anxiety of the unknown, which is a common factor in “The Pit And The Pendulum.” The narrator tells us that “ I am sick- sick unto death.” This description of certain death creates the feeling of anticipation. Poe often uses repetition to create suspense. In this story, Poe creates this feeling by the lack of description. The reader does not know what the storyteller is on trial for. This creates the feeling of the unknown. Another part of the story that creates tension is when the narrator is exploring the dungeon. A feeling of complete solitude and lack of knowledge while in the tomb creates anxiety. The action of the

Additionally, “The Pit and the Pendulum” is a nail-biting narration of a prisoner being kept in a dungeon. Unaware of what his fate will be, the narrator assumes he will suffer death by hanging, until he explores his unlit surroundings and finds he is in a dungeon with a deep pit in the floor and a pendulum like scythe swinging from the ceiling above. Left to die, the narrator is saved in his last moments of despair by General Laselle who has taken over the prison as part of his crusade to end the inquisition. Perhaps one of Poe's most aspirant pieces of writing, the narrator in the “The Pit and Pendulum” never relinquishes himself to what the reader may view as an inevitable, certain death.