How Does The Author Create Tension In The Fall Of House Of Usher

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Reading books that we are uncertain about and unfamiliar with will cause an atmosphere of fear because we aren’t certain how the story will unfold. Several stories show that. Those stories are Where is Here by Joyce Carol Oates, My Feather Pillow by Horacio Quiroga, Why Some Brains Enjoy Fear by Allegra Ringo, and In the Fall of House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe. All of these stories have a few things in common, they all cause uncertainty because the readers aren’t sure about the ending of the stories. A sense of uncertainty helps make stories more frightening and unsettling because the reader doesn't know what will happen and due to suspense, that will make the story more unsettling. In some cases, the ending makes us frightened because it …show more content…

And with no vomiting, nothing.If she wakes tomorrow as she did today, call me at once”(Quiroga IL7). She has a great weakness, and the doctor isn’t able to cure her illness. This all creates suspense because we don’t know what was causing Alicia’s illness and why she was suddenly ill when she was fine a bit ago. The readers are curious about what this mysterious illness is and when the readers find out that it was caused by a parasite draining her blood, the readers are completely shocked and the suspense was created due to that. Suspension can also be caused by huge plot twists, as shown in the story “In the Fall of House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe. The suspension in the story is that Usher, the brother, is acting very strange and that makes the readers suspicious of his intentions, we later find out that it's due to his sickness at First and he also believes that all objects around him are alive(This opinion, in its general form, was that of the sentience of all vegetable things. But, in his disordered fancy, the idea had assumed a more daring character, and trespassed, under certain conditions, upon the kingdom of organization. Poe …show more content…

Suspense can also be caused by the feeling of uncertainty, which is very closely related to fear because fear is the result of not knowing the unknown, curiosity, or a feeling such as anxiety and excitement. According to Dr. Kerr, an expert on fear who is a psychologist and occasionally works in scary houses, stated that some brains enjoy fear because “This speaks to the fact that things that violate the laws of nature are terrifying. And anything that doesn’t make sense or causes us some sort of dissonance whether it is cognitive or aesthetic will be scary”(Ringo 93). The plot twist in The Fall of House of Usher was surreal to the readers and it may not be associated with monsters but it still caused fear and suspense because of how bizarre the story was. Fear and suspense are closely related. Fear as shown in the stories listed, Fear is the feeling of being scared of the unknown, while suspense is the feeling of excitement and anticipation. Suspense and fear can be both caused by huge plot twists in a story that completely startles the reader. In the story Where is Here by Joyce Carol

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