The Tell-Tale Heart And The Pedestrian By Ray Bradbury

In both The Tell Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe, and The Pedestrian by Ray Bradbury, the author uses interesting incidences to create suspense. In The Tell Tale Heart, Poe creates a story about a man who murdered his mentor because,”One of his eyes resembled that of a vulture.”(Poe, 354-355) The man saw this eye as the embodiment of evil, and absolutely despised this eye. Keep in mind, he loved the man dearly, like a family member, but hated the eye so much, he committed patricide. As he committing this horrible act, the old man shrieked in fear. The murderer chopped up the body and put the pieces under the floorboards. The next day, police officers come into the house because someone reported hearing a scream. This is when the suspense of

During the conversation, however, he begins to hear an odd thumping coming from beneath him. He tries to drown out the noise by becoming louder and louder during his talk. He begins to make loud noises to stop the sound, screaming and dragging things across the floor. Towards the end of the conversation, he turns rabid,”Oh God! what could I do? I foamed-I raved-I swore!”(Poe 359) This quote shows the suspense being built during this portion of the story beginning to come to a climax as the ending is revealed. Eventually, the madman found the sound so loud, he was sure the policemen heard it and was mocking him. He admits to the murder and shows the policemen the body. The story abruptly ends at this point, the point where the man is proved insane. The suspense in this story stems from how confident the madman was in his ability to deceive. The author’s character puts himself in a situation where we, the readers, don’t know the outcome of the situation. The man has been so perfect up to this point, it is reasonable for his good streak to continue or die out. This is the

In this very short story, it is the year 2053, and Leonard Mead is walking down a barren street, looking at houses with dark windows, housing people doing nothing but watching T.V. Nobody just walks these days, so a police officer sees this as suspicious activity. Pulling over next to the guy, the officer shines a light into Leonard's face from his car, and asks what the man is doing. During their conversation, we see that writing is basically non-existent in this universe. The cop asks the man to get in the back seat. The man walks numbly to the car, as if he is drunk. He notices something strange about the car, however; “ As he had expected, there was no-one in the front seat, no-one in the car at all.”(Bradbury) The car takings him to a lab for research on “regressive tendencies.” The suspense in this story is created when the police car interrogates Leonard for being different, and turns out to be automated. This was only able to happen because the author put an interesting character into an interesting incident, being pulled over by an automated