Have you ever been reading a book and start to wonder “what happens next?” This is called suspense, a state or feeling of excited or anxious uncertainty about what may happen. These stories use suspense to help develop the overall tone of the two stories. “The Tell-Tale Heart”, by Edgar Allan Poe, and “The Monkey’s Paw, by W.W Jacobs, created a feeling of suspense by using cause-and-effect relationships by showing the characters’ feeling of something frightening might happen.
First off, “The Monkey’s Paw” uses cause-and-effect relationships to cause tension or suspense. “The Monkey’s Paw” is about a family comes into possession of a magical paw that will grant wishes, but at a cost. They wished for some money to test it out but they’re son
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“The Tell-Tale Heart” is about a butler who killed his master, because he had a single blue eye, by sneaking into his room and hitting him over the head with a lamp. When he thought he would get away with it without any problems, police show up due to a call from a neighbor saying they heard a scream. The police end up having a drink while they are there, and the butler panics and tells them about the body. “What could I do? I foamed- I raved- I swore. I swung the chair upon which I had been sitting, and grated it upon the boards, but the noise arose over all and continually increased… no, no! They heard! - They suspected! – They knew! – They were making a mockery of my horror! – This I thought, and this I think! But anything was better than this agony! Anything was more tolerable than this derision! I could bear those hypocritical smiles no longer! I felt as though I must scream or die! – And now- again- hark! Louder! Louder! Louder! (Poe 94). In this scene, he is going insane. He starts to get really nervous, and then tells them about the body. This is the main source of suspense, because the whole time you think “Is he going to tell them” or “What’s going to happen.” This story makes you really feel the suspense of what will happen