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How Does Poe Create Suspense In The Black Cat

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Poe creates mystery and suspense through the use of “Supernatural Occurrences”; however, it has been most effective in The Black Cat because the man has been haunted by his cat for a period of time and the first cat constantly shows “Supernatural Occurrences” after it dies. Mystery and suspense has been most effective in The Black Cat because it best uses “Supernatural Occurrences”, it adds revenge to the plot, and it uses “Omens, portents, visions”. Mystery and suspense proves to be most effective in The Black Cat because the story best conveys “Supernatural Occurrences”. The Black Cat tells a story about an alcoholic man who struggles with his addiction and ends up killing his cat Pluto. His cat haunts him in many ways after it’s death. …show more content…

In The Raven, Poe is grieving over his lost wife and not looking for revenge. House Of Usher is more focused on a visit to a strange mansion. In The Black Cat, after Pluto is abused and murdered, the narrator experiences supernatural occurrences. All of which were from Pluto. Poe uses the cat’s phantom form as a way to show how it can get back at the narrator and not be affected. Revenge also adds mystery and suspense because everything that happens to the narrator, leaves small evidence to show who was responsible. When the one wall remained, a cat figure was on it. When the stray cat’s white spot morphed, it became a noose. The same noose used to hang Pluto. Small hints are placed at the scene of disturbing scenarios and they all relate back to Pluto. In his lust for revenge, the narrator also was “Goaded, by the interference, into a rage more than demoniacal, I withdrew my arm from her grasp and buried the axe in her brain” (The Black Cat). The narrator had killed his wife while trying to kill the new cat as well. This quote shows how much he wanted

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The author increases the feeling of anxiety in the story by using foreshadowing. For example, after the narrator obtains the second black cat, he notices that the white patch on the second cat’s chest is forming into something. When the narrator realizes what the shape of the patch on the beast chest is, he states, “It was now the representation of an object that I shudder to have—and for this, above all, I loathed, and dreaded, and would have rid myself of the monster had I dared—it was how, I say, the image of a hideous—of a ghastly thing—of the GALLOWS!” (Poe 4)

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One can hear the guilt in Narrator 's confessions. However, he does not seem to understand that he is the reason of why the evil deeds occurred, blaming his pets for the tragedy. He states that if not for the cat, the crime scene would not have become so violent. Throughout reading the story, the readers begin

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Suspense in “The Black Cat” Why do people choose to go into haunted houses? It is because they want to know what happens inside. Haunted houses maintain this mystery and intrigue in order to create an element of suspense. Edgar Allan Poe uses this same element in “The Black Cat” to keep the reader interested. Poe develops suspense through three events: the hanging of his black cat, Pluto; the finding of the second black cat; and the killing of his wife, Virginia.

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Gothic literature thrives on suspense, a hallmark of Edgar Allan Poe's mastery. In "The Black Cat," Poe adeptly employs narrative techniques to keep readers engaged and anxious. Poe first builds suspense through strategic information withholding. The narrator's ominous declaration, "I'm not crazy, but I'll die tomorrow," leaves readers questioning his fate. Is he facing execution?

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In these two stories Poe uses foreshadowing in way that if the reader spots the small details or Poes “word playing “ he/she can predict what will happen or get a hint of what will happen. In Black Cat there are few foreshadows. One foreshadow is when the narrator sees a cat in the wall and Pluto`s color being black is believed to be unlucky and in this story the narrator is unhappy and unlucky. The narrator gets gouth because of a cat being inside a wall.

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How does Edgar Allan Poe develop suspense in the narrative “The Black Cat” to make it so spine chilling that will make you want to read more? In the beginning of Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, “The Black Cat”, the narrator develops lots of suspense in the short story. Edgar Allan Poe develops suspense in his narrative “The Black Cat” by using foreshadowing, anaphora, and fast pace. Edgar Allan Poe creates suspense by using foreshadowing in “The Black Cat”.

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Also, when reading “ The Black Cat”, Poe will not keep the reader up-to-date with the natural world. He likes to keep his readers guessing. This alone makes the narrator unreliable. When the Black Cat came back after the narrator killed it, both he and the reader were very shocked.

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As a result, this has formed a new sense of hatred towards the cat as it is a reminder of his cruelty and makes him feel guilt and shame about his actions. The protagonist constantly feels tormented by the cat’s presence and as a result eventually kills it. This quote from passage two

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These stories include “The Black Cat”, “The Cask of Amontillado”, and “The Tell-Tale Heart”, often told by a first-person narrator, and through this voice Poe probes the a character's psyche. In his Gothic tales Poe employed a symbolic method that he gives to poems such as “The Fall of the House of Usher”, “The Masque of the Red Death”, and “Ligeia”, an mysterious quality that peaks their interest. Poe was also interested in using the interest in science to peak his interest in readers, and draw them into his

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Telling him, he will never see them again. In his life, Poe was always missing the ones he loved such as his mother, his foster mother and his wife, Virginia. He was always hoping that there was an afterlife, so he could see them again. Depression and sorrow were also represented in The Black Cat. In The Black Cat the narrator was always drinking to get away from his “disease.”

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In the gruesome short story “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allen Poe a nameless narrator tells his story of his drunken and moody life before he gets hung the next day. The intoxicated narrator kills his favorite cat, Pluto and his wife with an axe. Soon enough, the narrator gets caught and there he ends up, in jail. Although, most readers of “The Black Cat” have argued the narrators insanity, more evidence have shown that he is just a moody alcoholic with a lousy temper.

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In the words of Stephen King "monsters are real and ghosts are real to they live inside us and sometimes they win. " This is shown in Edger Allen Poe's "The Black Cat" when the narrator starts to lose his sanity to alcoholism. As the narrator starts to lose his sanity he commits a series of violent and criminal acts of which he feels no remorse. In Poe's "The Black Cat" he uses many literary devices such as onomatopoeia, foreshadowing, and imagery to develop suspense.

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Comparative essay between The Black Cat and The Cat from Hell Thos about comparing and contrasting between Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Black Cat” and Stephen King’s “The Cat from Hell”. Both of the authors are greatly known for their gothic stories. This essay is also going to mention a lot of suspense techniques those two authors use and compare them. As you know, suspense is a technique use in English gothic literature to make the readers feel nervous about what is going to happen in the story itself.

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Most of the narrations like in "The Black Cat" give a sense of irrationality. Hatred, melancholy, woe and distress, his characters rely more on the human side showing their mental state, taking his stories to have a bigger impact on the reader’s minds. This is attributed to the period where his works were written, as stated earlier. Poe’s usage of resources like dark atmospheres, messing around with the time in which the story is represented, this was most commonly used to alter reader’s ideas of the perfection and the beauty and divert them more to the contemporary side. He liked to mix different settings with times who were most likely to confuse the reader’s perception of it, making his stories more suspenseful.

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Edgar Allan Poe addresses the dark and gruesome side of human nature in his writing “The Black Cat”, which during that time and even now are perceived as radical ideas. This dark human nature is displayed in Poe’s writing as the narrator recalls the happenings of a most erratic event. The narrator, a pet lover with a sweet disposition, in this story succumbs to the most challenging aspects of human nature including that of addiction, anger, and perverseness. To the Christian believer, human’s sinful flesh leads people to do wrong because that is their natural tendency.

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