How Does Poe Create Suspense In The Tell Tale Heart

Although debatable, the Tell-Tale Heart - written in January of 1843 by Edgar Allan Poe - is a perfect representation of the horror genre due to its uncanny use of suspense, setting, and parallel worlds. The Tell-Tale Heart is a short story, written in the perspective of an unnamed character. Such character is the caregiver of an old man. The old man has a film over his eye, which the narrator sees as an evil. The story’s narrator murders the man because of the eye, and throughout the entire story, shows evidence of him (the narrator) being insane. Throughout the context, however, the narrator attempts to prove that he isn’t (“The Tell-Tale Heart”). The Tell-Tale Heart is an eerie, perplexing, and bewildering short story. The short story uses suspense effectively to

The moment in the text causes the story’s audience to wonder what potentially could happen next. “Some writers have described suspense as being like a roller coaster. The trip up to the top is the suspense, and the fast trip down the hill is the pay-off” (Marble). Suspense, to the audience, is a stillness. The audience desires more information, while the ongoing suspense builds adrenaline. The moment itself seems still and ongoing, with nothing but the “entire hour” of nothingness occurring. Poe’s work includes elements of setting which challenge what one would imagine the horror genre to be. “You should have seen how wisely I proceeded - with what caution - with what dissimulation I went to work! I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him” (Poe 89 and 90). The murder, which took place in the bedroom of an old man’s house, is much different than what one would traditionally be familiar with in the horror genre. Traditional schemes of setting may include abandoned buildings, lowly-populated towns, and dark