Michael Welsh

Ms. Cox, P.4

English honors 9
12 October 2016
Quarter 1 essay
Suspense is the intense feeling an audience goes through while waiting for the outcome

of certain events. This element is what keeps an audience engaged and is crucial to a story.

Authors use many different tactics to create this intense feeling, to list a few, irony, poetic,

devices, and setting. All of these things are or can be used to create a very suspenseful feeling

enhancing the quality of the story.

Irony is used in many cases to create suspense in a story. Irony comes in three different

forms; situational, verbal, and dramatic. These three types of irony all represent different things

but come down to the same basic premises; somebody knows something someone else doesnt

and its suspenseful. Take this excerpt from The Tell Tail Heart for example. So you think I am

mad? A mad man cannot plan. But you should have seen me. For it was not the old man I

wanted to kill; it was the eye, his Evil Eye (poe 65). At this point in the story the audience

understands that the man is insane, but he believes he is perfectly right in the head. This

represents dramatic irony because the audience knows something the character doesnt, because

of this we feel suspense. This is not the only type of suspense though; this is another excerpt

from the same story. I pointed to the floor boards and cried, Yes! Yes, I killed him. Pull up the

boards and you shall see! (poe 67). This is an example of situational irony because the situation

took a totally unexpected twist. Suspense is showed through irony because it either makes you

anxious to know or dying to tell something.

 A readers connection to a character can influence how he or she feels about that

character; poetic devices are used to give more detail or explain in another way consequently

makes the audience form connections and relationships with the characters. This creates irony

because of the relationship formed with the character. The audience will either be worried for a

character they now care about or be anticipating something for a character they dislike.

Whichever one it is the audience is still experiencing the intense feeling of waiting for the

outcome. and I shook his hand, as if I had been his closest friend (poe 69). This excerpt

from The Cask of Amontillado shows an example of a poetic device. The metaphor gives a

deeper understanding of Montresors cunningness increasing the level of suspense for what was

soon to come. Then I placed the boards down again, so carefully no human eye could ever see

that they had been moved (poe 66). This piece from Tell Tail Heart gives another example of a

deeper understanding. An audience now knows the precision he uses allowing the fact that he is

mad to create more suspense and in the end situational irony. Poetic devices deepen our

understanding of how a character acts and makes the experience more suspenseful and real.

A huge part of suspense is the setting; some settings are just creepier than others making

us feel more suspense, or more light hearted lessening the suspense of a particular situation. For

example, a murder in the middle of a graveyard on Halloween night is more suspenseful than a

murder in the middle of a state fair. We could see the bones of the dead lying in large piles

along the walls (poe 70). This excerpt is an example of how a situation can be more suspenseful

depending on the setting. If the late night walk was through an illuminated city and not the

catacombs the suspense would be much lower. Suspense has to do with the level of worry one

has for a situation; that level of worry increases when a setting is off putting.
 Suspense can be created in many different ways and is imperative to a story. The more

connected we feel to characters has to do with the level of suspense we feel while they are in

trouble; a feeling we get more often when the setting is dark and eerie. Suspense is commonly

created by irony, poetic devices, and setting; these methods all manipulate the audiences mind in

the way the reader wants to keep them engaged. This is how that on the edge of your seat feeling

is created while reading.