Suspense In Edgar Allen Poe's Short Stories

Suspense is the feeling of curiosity, uncertainty, or even dread about what is going to happen next. This is a common feeling when reading stories from Edgar Allen Poe, who uses suspense in all his short stories. Through the use of signal words and vocabulary that indicate the passage of time Poe is able to create a feeling of suspense within the story that captures his readers’ attention. For example, the words “again” and “then” are signal words which guide the reader in the direction the author wants them to follow. Another example used to create suspense are the words that show time passing, such as before, earlier that morning and later that evening these words indicate the sequence of events. Poe also uses the repetition of those signal words to heighten the readers feeling of terror. Once he applies all of these methods to his writing it creates a structured piece of literature with several rising action and that feeling of

The repetition places emphasis on the message the author is trying to convey, such as, “Down still unceasingly still inevitably down” (Poe 277). When the narrator explains the pendulums movement “Down” is repeated to place emphasis on how fast it’s descending toward him, however, the repetition also adds to the suspense of the novel because the audience does not know what will happen to the narrator and will begin to worry as the pendulum closes in on him. Another, example is “Light flashed suddenly through the gloom, and has suddenly faded away” the repeated word “suddenly” tells the reader of an unexpected event of a door opening and closing which means the narrator is actually being watched while he is in his cell. Such an unexpected event makes a reader curious as to who is watching the main character, why they are watching and what is going to happen to him. Poe address all these questions through the sequence of the