Suspense In The Tell Tale Heart

“Where there is no imagination, there is no horror.” -A. C. Doyle. Horror is a large topic filled with suspense, setting, mood, and other topics all combined to bring people something suspenseful and thrilling. A few great examples of the horror genre are the stories “Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Monkey's Paw”. One part of horror is the build of suspense. It is very difficult though to build without organization such as building a fort, home, or project. A large part of many horror stories include a strong organization base. The story “Tell Tale Heart” uses much suspense based off our own background knowledge and our predictions to make the story have plenty of life. Edgar Allen Poe’s story says, “And every night, about midnight, I turned the latch of his door and opened it, oh, so gently!” (Poe, pg. 90) His build of coming back each night hooks the audience to think of just when he …show more content…
The narrator in that story states that he is not crazy for wanting to kill the man with the vulture eye. (lines 12-14) This type of story can go any way depending on what point of view the reader looks at it from. From the narrator’s point of view, the horror is coming from within the crazy mind of the man as he wants to kill the old man. From the old man’s point of view, the story is coming from a person against another person as the narrator wants to kill him.

Settings play one of the biggest roles in my opinion in creating horror. The short story “The Monkey’s Paw” shows quite a few examples of how setting and time effects the overall story. “Without, the night was cold and wet, but in the small parlor of Laburnum Villa the blinds were drawn and the fire burned brightly.” Now, imagine the story on a bright sunny morning. The effect wouldn’t be the same. Our mood of the story depends greatly on the opening setting, in this case they are using a traditional setting as what we would expect it to