Edgar Allan Poe Suspense Essay

“Sleep, those little slices of death — how I loathe them.” ― Edgar Allan Poe. Edgar Allan Poe lived a very depressing life full of sadness and death, which reflects throughout his poetry. Everyone he loved or was somewhat close to died so he felt that he could never get remotely close to anyone.In some of Poe’s stories like “The Tell-Tale Heart”, “The Black Cat”, “The Cask of Amontillado”, “Eldorado”, “The Raven”, and “Annabel Lee” he adds the topic of whether it being murder or one of his loved ones dying. Poe uses sentence structure, tone/mood, and point of view to establish suspense in his works. Poe uses sentence structure to communicate suspense to the reader. For example in “The Tell-Tale Heart” Poe uses very long descriptive sentences to describe how he murdered the

In all of Poe’s writings there is a very creepy and dark mood that is associated with death. In “The Cask of Amontillado” it says “The noise lasted for several minutes, during which, that I might hearken (listen carefully) to it with more satisfaction, I creased my labors and sat down upon the bones. When at last the clanking subsided (settled down), I resumed the trowel and finished without interruption the fifth, the sixth, and the seventh tier.” This developes a creepy and eerie mood. The fact that the narrator stopped to listen to Fortunato screaming in pain makes me extremely disturbed. This makes it suspenseful because it’s very strange and creepy so you want to know what Montresor does next. “I grew, day by day, more moody, more irritable, more regardless of the feelings of others. I suffered myself to use intemperate language to my wife. At length, I even offered her personal violence. My pets, of course, were made to feel the change in my disposition. I not only neglected, but ill-use them.” (“The Black Cat”) This again brings back the disturbed feeling that I get when I read some of his