How Does Edgar Allan Poe's Use Of Suspense

Writers can use many tricks to make a story seem more interesting to the reader. From the words they pick to the setting to the time of the day... the possibilities are endless. In the story "The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allen Poe, the use of light and darkness, the description of the mans eye and the time frame make the story more scary than anything else. Poe also uses suspense at the end to make the readers heart beat faster.

Like many of Poe's other works, the Tell-Tale Heart is a dark story. This particular one focuses on the events leading the death of an old man, and the events afterwards. That's the basics of it, but there are many deep meanings hidden in the three page short story. Poe uses techniques such as first person narrative, irony and style to pull off a believable sense of paranoia.

A person that brutally killed four people, and unaware of the very fact that he is the one that murdered all of them. “Strawberry Spring” by Stephen King is a story that takes place at New Sharon college, at the start of strawberry spring, and the narrator tells the story about how there is a killer on the college campus, and in the end we find out he is the killer. “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a story from the perspective of a mentally ill woman, who is on a summer stay at a colonial mansion, and her husband makes her stay in a bedroom to treat her mental illness, however the result is compromised due to the wallpaper in the room making her feel more ill than ever before. Lastly “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar

What happens when an individual descends into madness? This process is the focus of both Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Tell-Tale Heart”, and Emily Dickinson’s poem “I Felt a Funeral in my Brain.” Both texts use many structural techniques and literary devices to draw attention to the central idea of insanity. This insanity takes the form of a deviation from what the reader would consider normal. In spite of the two authors’ drastically different writing styles, one element remains constant, the masterful use of punctuation.

First, “The Tell-Tale Heart” develops horror by having an unreliable crazy narrator. For example, we see his psyche in the introduction of Edgar Allan Poe’s short story. “I heard all things in the heaven and earth. I heard many things in hell. How, then, am I mad?” (par. 1). This gives the audience the insight into the narrator’s mind; therefore, the narrator has some sort of schizophrenia that causes him to not hear, think, or behave correctly. As the narrator talks to the reader he thinks he is not crazy and that his thoughts are normal. Next, the short story is written in first person point of view which makes the story way more interesting and you see how mad this character is. “I grew furious as I gazed upon it” (par. 9). In first person point of view the reader can almost imagine the whole situation as the narrator is in the old man’s room looking at his vulture eye. Plus, the narrator killing the old man was premeditated, and that the narrator was in the man’s house to murder him due to his mental health issues. The psycho narrator in “The Tell-Tale Heart” develops horror in this short story.

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 short story the Tale Tell Heart, Edger Allen Poe uses many literary elements to show the theme of the story. Some of the literary elements that Poe uses are first person narrator, interior monologue, and cosmic irony. With these elements Poe is able to display the theme of the story which is, we are afraid of the things we don’t understand and a guilty conscience will win out in the end. These are the themes and elements of Poe’s short story.

First, horror is developed in “The Tell Tale Heart” by the insanity of the narrator. The narrator believes he is a sane person, but contradicted himself when he kills the old man. This creates a complex in the character’s mind. When the police shows because the neighbors heard a yell, he begins to hear the old man’s heartbeat, but his guilt consumes him and he confesses to murdering the old man and putting his body underneath the floorboards. Also, in the beginning of the story, the narrator describes why he wants to kill the old man. “It was impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain; but once conceived, it haunted me day and night” (Para. 2). His insane idea of killing the old man because of his vulture eye pops into his thoughts without a preconceived notion of doing so. The murder is premeditated and thought out as each night he cracks the door open and glares the lantern directly at the vulture eye. The insanity of the narrator develops “The Tell Tale Heart” into horror.

The Tell Tale Heart' is a story about a man who killed an old man just

Edgar Allen Poe’s The Tell Tale Heart is a totally different type of horror, as it is more psychological, as it is told by the murderer. It’s also told almost as a justification, as the narrator/main character is very obviously mentally disturbed; this is in direct contrast with the point of view of Going to Meet The

How Does Edgar Allan Poe Keep the reader in suspense in the “Tell-Tale Heart”? In the “Tell Tale Heart” the old man is being cared for, by the caretaker, the caretaker stalks the old man for 7 nights straight. He decides he needs to kill the old man because of his evil, vulture eye that he thinks stares him down. The eighth night the caretaker decides to kill the man, in a flash of a second the old man was dead.

Audre Lorde once said,“Guilt is not a response to anger; it is a response to one’s own actions or lack of action.” In the story, “A Tell Tale Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe, the speaker kills an old man because of his eye and confesses the murder he made to the officers. In the poem, “I Can Stand Him No Longer” by Raphael Dumas the speaker tells about how much hatred he has towards a man that he has encountered daily, but how other people do not agree with him. The story, “A Tell Tale Heart” uses suspense while the poem, “I Can Stand Him No Longer” uses internal conflict to develop the thematic statement of guilt.

The Mystery of Poe “Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of reality. ”(Poe) Strangely enough, Edgar Allan Poe actually incorporated the quote in every book, short story, and a poem he wrote.

The Ring and Tell-Tale Heart are perfect examples at conveying the element of suspense; the movie and the story use scenarios such as the horse going mad, the killer walking in the room for seven days and the killer becoming too confident; to convey suspense. First of all, in the movie when the horse goes crazy, it creates uncertainty, because the horse is unpredictable as soon as it senses the curse placed on Rachel, both Rachel and we do not know how the horse will react thus creating tension and suspense in the scene. Second of all in the short story, the killer walks into the old man's room for seven days in a row; we do not know the murderer's intentions even though he talks about the eye. However, we assume that he is mentally sane, but

“The Tell Tale Heart”, a short story by Edgar Allan Poe which details the murder of an innocent old man with a “vulture” like eye that infuriates the unnamed narrator; he describes with a joyous excitement, the planning and execution of the killing as well as the hiding of the corpse in the floorboards. Poe uses literary devices such as authorial intrusion, italics, and cacophony to create a manic voice for the narrator.