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An essay about suspense
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You wake up at 3:07 and you hear the voices from your closet and the door shrieking and a hand coming out of it you suddenly wake up and realize it’s just a dream the alarm clock flashes 3:06 the closet door shrieks….. - ( Lia Shimon)Short anecdotes, long stories and poems like the one you just read, which create suspense and may frighten many readers who enjoy stories. A good author will produce suspenseful stories that will terrify and shock the reader by providing foreshadowing, reversal and last but not least the suspense that will give the reader the chills down their spine by reflecting people's deepest fear, however, they will continue reading it, no matter how scared they are. Not every author makes a reader feel petrified because …show more content…
A car may run over you, and there's always a banana skin or orange peel, to say nothing of fallen ladders." This demonstrates a unique way to simply know something might or is going to occur. We do face the Main character which is James Clarence. ( August Heat) The Author interprets that line in the story of warning “If something happens don’t think It was an accident, because I warned you.” ( Bald Man - August Heat) In anticipation, James had met Atkinson while he walked for six miles until he found a path that he decided to take.That path leads him to the Monumental Mason worker in English and Italian Marbles shop. The man working seemed very amiable and hardworking. In addition, he greeted James as an old friend and even invited him to supper, however, when the man tells this to James, we start to assume that there's something unnatural and uncanny about him. There was just one thing simply not right about him. James didn’t know how to describe the feeling he had. As a result, the reader may transition from feeling timid to panicked, this situation will lead them to feel fearful and question him/ her -self as to why he told him such tragedy that could happen to
A spider, a zombie, a serial killer, all of these things would scare most but why do people pay good money to be scared by all these things? Because people like to be scared. Ever since people could speak to one another, they have been telling these stories. whether it be around a dim lit campfire, in the form of a book, or even on the big screen. these stories stand out through time because of their graphic word choice, unique characters, and suspense. Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Black Cat” and Joyce Carol Oates “Where Are You Going Where Have You Been?” both possess these elements of word choice and suspense along with psychotic like characters such as Arnold Friend (WAYG) and the narrator (The Black Cat). Poe's character the
How W.W. Jacobs, H.G. Wells and Charles Dickens Create Suspense in their Gothic Horror Stories
Suspense is the feeling of uncertainty or excitement, in waiting for an outcome or decision. Edgar Allan Poe uses suspense in his story “Masque of the Red Death” by using objects and great descriptive detail. Poe’s story is about a prince that tries to escape from the inevitable. He tries to lock himself away from the ‘red death’ and has a masquerade ball that doesn’t end happily. Prince and all of his guests die inside or around the seventh apartment room. The seventh room is preceded by six colored rooms which are meant to symbolize either the stages of life, or the seven sins. Inside the last room there are black velvet tapestries that hang all over the ceiling and down the walls. The window panes are a deep blood red color which gives the room an unwelcoming atmosphere. On the western wall, there is a gigantic clock of a deep black wood. Inside it has a pendulum that swings back and forth with a dull monotonous clang. When the minute hand marks a new hour, there is a clear, loud, deep sound, which can be heard from far away. Although it can give off an eerie feeling, the great eb...
Picture yourself walking into your home from a good night spending, you put your stuff down and lay on the couch. Suddenly you hear footsteps upstairs and a big thump. Curiosity gets to you, so you go upstairs to check on what it was; no one could be in the house, you live alone. You walk into your room and start examining every corner, nothing. Once you’re about to leave the door slams shut, the light turns off, and the window shatters; trying to reach for the switch the light turns back on and in front of you a black figure stands and whispers your name slowly. This type of story is designed to make your heart beat as fast as a buzzer, they are known as horror stories. A writer tries to scare the reader by trying to relate to relate to everyone’s fear, or by using suspense. Suspense is needed for a good horror story; writers would use reversal or foreshadowing.
Suspense is a key factor to the story, “The Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allen Poe. According to the Oxford Dictionary, suspense is the state or feeling of excited or anxious uncertainty about what may happen. Poe uses the senses to bring the reader aware of the building suspense. He does this by telling the reader about the ominous setting of all the chambers, especially the seventh chamber. The sound of the grandfather clock, sending sinister shivers throughout the party goers each hour, keeps them on their toes. Finally, the fast-paced chase of the intruder and the Prince build to the suspense at the final moments of the story.
As Mccarthy once said “The suspense of a novel is not only in the reader but in the novelist, who is intensely curious about what will happen to the hero. (Mary McCarthy)” In this quote, McCarthy means the main characters in the story are suspenseful to draw the reader to be anxious. Above all, the author incorporates the use of literary terms in his or her’s story to create the feeling of suspense. To be specific, in the story “The Hitchhiker” by Lucille Fletcher, the author includes the elements foreshadowing and supernatural to leave the reader anticipated and anxious what is going on in the story. Also, in “The Monkey's Paw” by W.W Jacobs, the author develops suspense by adding literary devices such as situational irony and cliffhanger
Suspense is an anxious uncertainty and apprehension that writers use to make the reader feel scared, wary and make tension happen. It could also be to attract the reader to the story in the first place and make them read it. Suspense usually happens at a climax; the story has been building up and building up and then something happens that relieves the reader.
When writing a story that is meant to scare the reader, authors use a variety of different literary elements to intensify fear. This is apparent in the stories “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “beware: do not read this poem,” and “House Taken Over”. It is shown through transformation in the character, setting, and sometimes even the story or poem itself, adding to the scariness that the reader feels when reading it. While there are some examples of transformation not being scary or not playing a role in stories meant to scare us, transformation plays a crucial role in making the reader of these stories scared.
First thing to remember, Humans react to the horror by the amount of fear they have inside of them. In fact, King's short story “Strawberry spring” causes fear to the people because it’s something that would come around every eight years.(Strawberry
In the story, the main character, the killer, admits at the very end of the story that he killed the old man to the cops. Here is exactly what it says, “Villains I shrieked, dissemble no more! I admit the deed! - tear up the planks! -here,here! - it is the beating of his hideous heart.”. This quote from the book was on page 65, the last page of the story. It shows suspense such as mood because of how the writer shows the character’s hate to everyone else. Also it shows the feelings of anger from the killer to the cops. Another element of suspense it shows is tone. It shows tone because the character is showing an attitude to the cops and describing how much he hates the cops. Another part of the story with lots of suspense was when it said, “... you cannot imagine how stealthily, stealthily - until at length a single dim ray like the thread of the spider shot out from the crevice and fell upon the vulture eye.” This quote was on page 63 and It shows imagery because of how well the author describes the character. The author uses good word phrasing in the right spots. This is why I think this is one of the stories with the most
Reasons why writers use suspense in their horror stories “horror stories are designed to make our pulses race our skin tingle.” Some of the greatest horror stories like Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein,
Senses of danger are seen as being typical because they can be predicted. The repetition and tense prevent any changing of the plot or outcome. Repetition also suggests that it reduces the “will” and “desires” which leads to death (80). Mitchell brings up the idea of the “tyranny of things” and connects it to how when the temperature gets colder it also lowers the temperature of the text which basically means the physical resources are draining due to the cold which kills the man (80). The “tyranny of things” also suggests “to break down characteristic connections between both objects and events” (80). Repetition also sets up the idea of the future is already decided and the character has no control over the outcome. Throughout the story there is “ephemeral hope” and it is seen throughout word choice. “To Build a Fire” ultimate story is to outrun the cold temperature in order to survive and there is knowledge to derail death. Mitchell suggests that the under usage of the word “know” shows that there is no way for character choice or possibility because knowledge helps shape the future based on past experiences and the Man’s knowledge is useless (81). To enjoy London’s “simple, disconnected sentences”,
In this story, fear played a very important part. It provided a way for the author to make suspense. For instance when the drugstore’s owner called the police, it made the reader wonder if the police would arrive first or if Alfred’s mother would arrive first. Also, in the beginning when the owner caught Alfred shoplifting and we find out that Alfred is scared, it makes the reader wonder why he is scared. So as you can see, fear does play an important part in this story’s suspense category.
The authors of the two texts “The Tell Tale Heart” and I Know What You Did Last Summer effectively created suspense through the use of dramatic elements. The two texts used description of the character’s fears and anxiety in order to create suspense. Dialogue between characters build suspense in “The Tell Tale Heart” and I Know What You Did Last Summer Imagery is used to create suspense in the two texts.Therefore the two stories “The Tell Tale Heart” and I Know What You Did Last Summer use Imagery, Dialogue, and description of the characters fears because it creates suspense throughout the story.
Watch this Ted Talk, The Danger of a Single Story: https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story?language=en (Links to an external site.)