Oshiro 1

Dana Oshiro

Mrs. Davenport

English 9 Honors

19 October 2016

Quarter One Essay

Whether it’s the moments before a game-winning play or a protagonist entering enemy

territory, suspense decorates and leads into a climax. Especially in literature, authors captivate

their readers by utilizing devices which create intensity in the story. The most effective tools

used to create suspense are perspective such as in “The Tell-Tale Heart,” cliff-hangers like in

“The Lady or the Tiger?” and mood/tone in “The Cask of Amontillado.”

Edgar Allen Poe wrote about the murder of a man’s roommate in “The Tell-Tale Heart.”

Increasingly throughout the story, the first-person narrator is overcome by guilt as he

delusionally believes that he can hear his victim’s heartbeat grow more loudly. “Can you see that

I have full control of my mind? Is it not clear that I am not mad...I heard sounds from heaven;

and I have heard sounds from hell” (Poe 1). The narrator has fast, running thoughts often

associated with the mentally ill. As the speaker attempts to convince his listeners of his sanity,

readers actually start to question why the narrator needs to validate his mental state and if he is

reliable. This capricious point of view and protagonist creates suspense as readers cannot predict

his actions. “I killed him. But why does his heart not stop beating?! Why does it not stop!?”

(Poe 4). In “The Tell-Tale Heart” the speaker is not sane, causing readers to be unsure of the

narrator’s future actions. From the first-person perspective, Poe creates suspense as his

protagonist is an unpredictable, deranged murderer.

Mood or tone is an effective mechanism to generate suspense and allow readers to

anticipate the next event. During ominous parts of a story, the author may describe the scene in
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such a way that is dark and foreboding. In the “The Cask of Amontillado,” Montresor leads

Fortunato underground to enact a punishment on Fortunato for insulting his family name. “We

were entering the last resting place of the dead of the Montresor family. Here too we kept our

finest wines, here in the cool, dark, still air under the ground” (Poe 3). Mentions of death and the

use of uncomfortable adjectives illustrate a suspenseful setting of the plot. Poe describes the

aspects of the underground tunnels and the feeling of dread and despair. “Finally we arrived at a

vault in which the air was old and heavy that our lights almost died” (Poe 4). When the author

constructs his story, he uses words such as: “old” and “heavy” to forge a tense sensation within

readers. The certain and peculiar word choices an author makes set the mood of the story and

cause the reader to predict or ponder the upcoming climatic action. Uneasiness and dark themes

create suspense, in addition to a feeling that something will go wrong.

Lastly, another effective technique to move a plot with suspense is to use cliffhangers.

Cliffhangers leave readers begging to learn the outcome. For example, Frank Stockton applies

cliffhangers to “The Lady of the Tiger?.” This short story tells the tale of a princess choosing to

send her lover to death or to be wed to another woman. “She knew in which of the two rooms,

that lay behind those doors, stood the cage of the tiger, with its open front, and in which waited

the lady” (Stockton 2). The audience waits in anticipation to learn the princess’ decision, for the

uncertainty generates suspense. Stockton also utilizes cliffhangers at the end of his story in

which readers are left devastated for an explicit conclusion. “Now, the point of the story is this:

Did the tiger come out of the door, or did the lady?” (Stockton 3). Stockton finishes the story by

leaving readers to guess the decision. Cliffhangers place an unfinished explanation to create

suspense and abandon the reader to obsessively question the untold result.

To conclude, perspective, cliffhangers, and mood are the best ways to add

suspense to a story. Each technique causes readers to yearn for the outcome of events and, in
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turn, make the story interesting and enjoyable. Suspense has the power to transform a story into

an engaging plot and thought-provoking work of art.

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Works Cited

Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Cask of Amontillado.” Edgar Allan Poe: Storyteller. United States

Information Agency, 1988. pp. 68-72.

---. “The Tell Tale Heart.” Edgar Allen Poe: Storyteller. United States Information Agency,

1988. pp. 64-67

Stockton, Frank. “The Lady, or the Tiger?.” 1882.