Theme Of Syntax In Edgar Allan Poe

For almost two-hundred years, Edgar Allan Poe has been enticing readers with his spine-tingling gothic tales. Poe is one of the faces of 17th century literature. He was one of the pioneers of modern writing, as he was not afraid to compose pieces related to controversial themes. In his stories, “The Cask of Amontillado”, “The Fall of the House of Usher”, “The Tell Tale Heart”, and “Annabel Lee” Poe uses different elements of author’s style to add suspense and create a mood. The eerie tone apparent in Poe’s writing is conveyed by his use of unsettling imagery and suspenseful syntax. Poe’s life began on January 1, 1809. As a child, Poe’s father left his family and his mother passed away. He was orphaned at a young age and was taken in by the Allan family. His life was plagued with poverty and alcoholism. Poe had the reputation of

In the story “The Tell Tale Heart”, the narrator starts hearing the heart of the man he had just killed. It gets “Louder! Louder! Louder! Louder!” The sound of the heartbeat is emphasized through repetition. It also reveals the narrator 's slow decline to insanity. This repetition helps Poe build suspense and convey eerie moods in his stories. In “The Cask of Amontillado”, another one of Poe’s short stories, the narrator leads Fortunato into the catacombs and traps him inside. He slowly builds a wall to trap Fortunato: “I laid the second tier, and the third, and the fourth… I resumed the trowel, and finished without intervention the fifth, sixth, and seventh tier… I had completed the eighth, ninth and tenth tier.” Poe’s syntactical use of parallel structure adds suspense to the story. Poe describes every detail of the bricklaying to symbolize the slow painful death of Fortunato, creating suspense and conveying a chilling tone to the reader. Poe’s use of parallel structure and repetition is crucial to his writing style because it helps Poe generate the suspense the stories