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Dana Oshiro
Mrs. Davenport
English 9 Honors
19 October 2016
Whether it’s the moments before a game-winning play or a protagonist entering enemy
territory, suspense decorates and leads into a climax. Especially in literature, authors captivate
their readers by utilizing devices which create intensity in the story. The most effective tools
used to create suspense are perspective such as in “The Tell-Tale Heart,” cliff-hangers like in
Edgar Allen Poe wrote about the murder of a man’s roommate in “The Tell-Tale Heart.”
delusionally believes that he can hear his victim’s heartbeat grow more loudly. “Can you see that
I have full control of my mind? Is it not clear that I am not mad...I heard sounds from heaven;
and I have heard sounds from hell” (Poe 1). The narrator has fast, running thoughts often
associated with the mentally ill. As the speaker attempts to convince his listeners of his sanity,
readers actually start to question why the narrator needs to validate his mental state and if he is
reliable. This capricious point of view and protagonist creates suspense as readers cannot predict
his actions. “I killed him. But why does his heart not stop beating?! Why does it not stop!?”
(Poe 4). In “The Tell-Tale Heart” the speaker is not sane, causing readers to be unsure of the
narrator’s future actions. From the first-person perspective, Poe creates suspense as his
anticipate the next event. During ominous parts of a story, the author may describe the scene in
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such a way that is dark and foreboding. In the “The Cask of Amontillado,” Montresor leads
Fortunato underground to enact a punishment on Fortunato for insulting his family name. “We
were entering the last resting place of the dead of the Montresor family. Here too we kept our
finest wines, here in the cool, dark, still air under the ground” (Poe 3). Mentions of death and the
use of uncomfortable adjectives illustrate a suspenseful setting of the plot. Poe describes the
aspects of the underground tunnels and the feeling of dread and despair. “Finally we arrived at a
vault in which the air was old and heavy that our lights almost died” (Poe 4). When the author
constructs his story, he uses words such as: “old” and “heavy” to forge a tense sensation within
readers. The certain and peculiar word choices an author makes set the mood of the story and
cause the reader to predict or ponder the upcoming climatic action. Uneasiness and dark themes
Lastly, another effective technique to move a plot with suspense is to use cliffhangers.
Cliffhangers leave readers begging to learn the outcome. For example, Frank Stockton applies
cliffhangers to “The Lady of the Tiger?.” This short story tells the tale of a princess choosing to
send her lover to death or to be wed to another woman. “She knew in which of the two rooms,
that lay behind those doors, stood the cage of the tiger, with its open front, and in which waited
the lady” (Stockton 2). The audience waits in anticipation to learn the princess’ decision, for the
uncertainty generates suspense. Stockton also utilizes cliffhangers at the end of his story in
which readers are left devastated for an explicit conclusion. “Now, the point of the story is this:
Did the tiger come out of the door, or did the lady?” (Stockton 3). Stockton finishes the story by
leaving readers to guess the decision. Cliffhangers place an unfinished explanation to create
suspense and abandon the reader to obsessively question the untold result.
To conclude, perspective, cliffhangers, and mood are the best ways to add
suspense to a story. Each technique causes readers to yearn for the outcome of events and, in
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turn, make the story interesting and enjoyable. Suspense has the power to transform a story into
Works Cited
Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Cask of Amontillado.” Edgar Allan Poe: Storyteller. United States
---. “The Tell Tale Heart.” Edgar Allen Poe: Storyteller. United States Information Agency,