Suspense In W. F. Harvey's August Heat

A father is lying in a bed after waking up, he grabs the baby monitor and walks to his desk in his office at home, he has his baby on the baby monitor and hears his wife say to her "Go to sleep... go to sleep." When suddenly the front door opens and his wife comes in with groceries.- By Chrissy Stockson. Short anecdotes, long stories and poems like the one you just read above create suspense and frighten many readers who enjoy stories. A good author will produce suspenseful stories that will terrify and shock the reader by providing foreshadow, reversal and last but not least the suspense that will give the reader "the chills" by reflecting people's deepest fear, however, they will continue reading it, no matter how scared they are. Not all authors accomplish to execute a suspenseful story, but "August Heat" by W.F. Harvey portrays a perfect example of it.

In the short story "August Heat" by W.F Harvey we encounter the main character James Clarence is told by Mr. Atskinson a marble

producer for tombstones "If you go back home to-night, you take your chance of accidents. A car may run over you, and there's always a banana skin or orange peel, to say nothing of fallen ladders." this is an example of foreshadowing. Previously, James had met Mr. Atskinson while he was walking. James had walked about six miles and there was a sudden 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. 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 James.
Another example of foreshadowing would be when suddenly James is lead to the marble shop where they create gravestones and decorate them as the customer desires. Could this possibly mean anything that has to deal with death? The reader is intrigued into uncovering what will happen next. Therefore, the reader begins to make assumptions in their heads of what this piece of evidence might lead to.

In addition, a reversal tactic is important as well to let the reader know the situation in which the character is in. Reversal is when a character goes from a good situation to bad or vice versa. An illustration of this can be seen the man James drew a sketch of a criminal that was in prison, and as a result, the man in the drawing was the same man at the marble place. "It was the man I had been drawing, whose portrait lay in my pocket. He sat there huge and elephantine, the face was the same, the expression was absolutely different." This evidence suggests that this marble man is unusual and abnormal. Automatically the reader knows that this simple drawing will go from good to bad since it's mysterious that the drawing represents a real person whom he didn't know.

Thirdly, the most important of all is the suspense that horrifies the reader!

Like said in the informative essay "How Do writers Create Suspense?" Horror stories are designed to "make our pulses and our skin tingle." In the same way, when they involve such things that are evil and demonic that give us nightmares is the key point of suspense. The outcome of suspense will convey the reader to continue reading to find out what will happen next. For instance, after Mr. Atkinson was done with his work he asked James for his opinion on, how did it look and James read the following: "Sacred to the memory of James Clarence Withencroft born Jan. 18th, 1860 He passed away very suddenly...." A fragment like this sends shivers down a person's whole body, leaving the awestruck to speak and afraid! Harvey did an outstanding job by adding this fragment because it obviously made the reader quiver and terrorized which lets the author know that the suspense has been reached and executed

properly.

To sum up, it's evident that W.F. Harvey followed most of the steps listed in the informative essay "How Do writers Create Suspense?" because he was able to accomplish creating a suspenseful story by providing enough information that covered the primary points of a revealing story that leaves its readers with an exponential amount of uncertainty. The main primary points are Foreshadow, reversal, and suspense.