The Effective Use Of Macabre In The Pit And The Pendulum, And

Macabre events continue to hold an audience’s attention through books, movies, pictures, and photos. Macabre is still used in today’s stories. It creates suspense through cliff-hangers, and foreshadowing events of the story. Macabre is used for the allegorical representation of the ever-present and universal power of death. The Devil and Tom Walker, The Pit and the Pendulum, and the Minister’s Black Veil contain examples of Macabre events that add suspense to the short stories, Washington Irving uses the Macabre event of the trees to add suspense to The Devil and Tom Walker. The trees symbolize many different things. This Macabre adds suspense to the story because it foreshadows who is going to die next. For example, “found most of the tall trees marked with the name of some great mand of the colony.”(Irving, 92) Also, in the story they described the trees as dark and lonely. The trees were different sizes. Some trees were tall, and some were short, this also signifies who will die next. Whichever tree is the shortest, whoevers name is on it, loses their life next but we don’t know how. It describes the lengths of the trees, “saw that it had been nearly hewm through, so the first high wind was likely to blow it down.”(Irving, 89-90) Which is also saying first tree down is the one who dies. Edgar Allan Poe uses the …show more content…
In the Devil and Tom Walker, there were many events that occurred that added suspense to the story. The main event that added suspense was the trees. Throughout the story, trees symbolized a variety of things. For example, they symbolized the men in the colony. The Pit and the Pendulum added suspense to the story by talking about time running out. It leaves the audience wondering if the narrator is going to escape in time or not. Finally, the Minister’s Black Veil also added suspense to the