Pit And Pendulum Short Story Theme

In the stories, Pit and Pendulum and Button, Button, by Edgar Allan Poe and Richard Matheson, the suspense is created by using many different aspects. In Pit And Pendulum the author faces his death through torture, and goes through many challenges. While in Button, Button, Norma has to decide to kill someone to gain a mass amount of fortune. The quote in the books by Stephen King is illustrated in this story. Stephen King's Idea means that fear of the unknown creates suspense, It illustrates that something that the reader does not know, makes them read the story. It makes them hooked to the story because reader wants to know the unknown or what's behind the door, instead of just knowing what's behind it beforehand. The author also might keep

In Pit and Pendulum the conflict between the character and itself creates a suspense, and same for the Normal form Button Button. In Pit and Pendulum, Poe uses imagery and sensory details to illustrate the conflict between the character and himself. The main character conflict with himself is illustrated by,“There could be no doubt of the design of my tormentors - oh! most unrelenting! oh!... Yet, for a wild moment, did my spirit refuse to comprehend the meaning of what I saw.”(Poe, lines 501-508). While in Button, Button the conflict is illustrated by when Norma says “That they want to know what average people would do under such circumstance… You don’t think that they’d kill somebody do you”(Matheson, p110). In both stories the main character had to fight themselves. In Pit and Pendulum the character has to face death without losing himself. He is put under circumstances where he will go insane, and because of that he has to fight himself. In Button, Button, Norma has to decide whether or not to push the button to. She uses those lines as an excuse to push the button and also to settle the conflict with herself. Both of the stories type of conflict illustrate this because the reader does not know how character's conflict with themselves would lead them to solve, or not solve, the mystery of the unknown and

Poe uses sensory details, imagery, and setting, to make the reader predict what is going to happen in the near future in Pit and Pendulum. While Matheson uses dialogue, and character’s thoughts and actions create an ironic ending. Poe uses foreshadowing by writing, “There came thronging upon my recollection a thousand vague rumors of the horrors of Toledo. Of the dungeons there had been strange things narrated—fables I had always deemed them—... Was I left to perish of starvation in this subterranean world of darkness; or what fate, perhaps even more fearful, awaited me?(Poe, lines 133-139). While Matheson’s idea of foreshadowing and the twist ending is represented by, “She shuddered Was it happening? A chill of horror swept across her”(Matheson, p110). Both stories use foreshadowing to tell the reader that something bad is going to happen. In Pit and Pendulum, it makes reader predict that something bad is waiting for the character which is worse than death but he manages to survive it. While in Button, Button it says that someone is going to die because Norma pushed the button, but the end result was ironic as her husband was killed who she thought knew the best. Both of these ideas of foreshadowing represents King’s ideas of fear of the unknown, as at first the reader will make a prediction and will read to see if his prediction came true or not. But