Scribd Logo
Upload

Welcome to Scribd!

  • 388 views

    Suspense Literary Devices

    Uploaded by

    api-357397358
    The document discusses how authors create suspense in stories through various literary devices. It provides examples from three stories: Agatha Christie's "And Then There Were None", Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart", and his "The Cask of Amontillado". Foreshadowing, mood and tone, and imagery are highlighted as techniques that build anticipation and frighten readers. Details like the nursery rhyme in "And Then There Were None" or the dark, fearful descriptions in "The Tell-Tale Heart" engage readers and keep them interested in finding out what will happen next.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Suspense Literary Devices

    Uploaded by

    api-357397358
    388 views3 pages
    The document discusses how authors create suspense in stories through various literary devices. It provides examples from three stories: Agatha Christie's "And Then There Were None", Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart", and his "The Cask of Amontillado". Foreshadowing, mood and tone, and imagery are highlighted as techniques that build anticipation and frighten readers. Details like the nursery rhyme in "And Then There Were None" or the dark, fearful descriptions in "The Tell-Tale Heart" engage readers and keep them interested in finding out what will happen next.

    Original Title

    suspense literary devices

    Copyright

    © © All Rights Reserved

    Available Formats

    DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Did you find this document useful?

    Is this content inappropriate?

    The document discusses how authors create suspense in stories through various literary devices. It provides examples from three stories: Agatha Christie's "And Then There Were None", Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart", and his "The Cask of Amontillado". Foreshadowing, mood and tone, and imagery are highlighted as techniques that build anticipation and frighten readers. Details like the nursery rhyme in "And Then There Were None" or the dark, fearful descriptions in "The Tell-Tale Heart" engage readers and keep them interested in finding out what will happen next.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    388 views3 pages

    Suspense Literary Devices

    Uploaded by

    api-357397358
    The document discusses how authors create suspense in stories through various literary devices. It provides examples from three stories: Agatha Christie's "And Then There Were None", Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart", and his "The Cask of Amontillado". Foreshadowing, mood and tone, and imagery are highlighted as techniques that build anticipation and frighten readers. Details like the nursery rhyme in "And Then There Were None" or the dark, fearful descriptions in "The Tell-Tale Heart" engage readers and keep them interested in finding out what will happen next.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    You are on page 1of 3

    Popescu 1

    Angela Popescu

    Davenport

    English 9 H

    17 October 2016
    Suspense Literary Devices

    When a story has the reader biting their nails, anticipated to discover what happens next,

    that means the story uses suspense. Authors use suspense to grab the readers attention. When

    suspense is added to a story, it becomes engrossing. Some literary devices that authors use to

    create suspense are pace, imagery, foreshadowing, mood and tone, point of view, and dramatic

    irony.

    Agatha Christie does a splendid job at creating suspense in And Then There Were None. A

    literary device she uses abundantly is foreshadowing. Foreshadowing builds anticipation about

    what might happen next. The nursery rhyme about the ten little soldiers foreshadowed every

    characters death. Vera Claythorne was one of the first people to realize that. Bees, hives, bees!

    Oh, dont you understand? Havent you read the idiotic rhyme? Its up in all your bedroomsput

    there for you to study! (Christie 186). General Macarthur was another character in the story that

    foreshadowed that they were not going to leave the island. None of us are going to leave this

    island. Thats the plan. You know it, of course, perfectly (Christie 129). Mr. Macarthur clearly

    predicts the characters are going to perish there on the island, and thats what makes it

    suspenseful.

    The Tell-Tale Heart is a very eerie story, with a great deal of suspense in it. Edgar Allan

    Poe uses mood and tone to create suspense. He creates a sinister and ghostly mood and tone to

    frighten the reader. And as the sound grew louder my anger became greater and more painful.

    But it was more than anger. In the quiet night, in the dark silence of the bedroom my anger

    became fear for the heart was beating so loudly that I was sure someone must hear (Poe 66).
    Popescu 3

    Using words like painful, anger, dark, and fear create a chilling, and spooky mood and tone.

    While someone is reading this story, they can feel the fear the old man is feeling by the way

    author uses mood and tone. Then I heard a sound, a low cry of fear which escaped from the old

    man. Now I knew that he was sitting up in his bed, filled with fear; I knew that he knew that I

    was there. (Poe 65). Mood and tone has a great impact on the suspense of a story, because it

    makes it daunting.

    Imagery is a broadly used literary device that creates suspense. One of the stories that

    used great examples of imagery to create suspense is The Cask of Amontillado. Imagery made

    this story a little more frightening, by giving a lot of gruesome details. But our eyes soon

    became used to the darkness. We could see the bones of the dead lying in large piles along the

    walls (Poe 70). The reader can picture the darkness, and the piles of bones, and the story

    becomes more alarming, and chilling. The fact that Edgar Allan Poe describes the setting as dark

    creates suspense, because the reader is aware that something ruinous is going to happen. There

    we could see the stone steps going down into the darkness (Poe 69). Imagery makes the

    audience imagine what is happening in their minds, and using fearful descriptions makes the

    story suspenseful.

    And Then There Were None, Tell-Tale Heart, and The Cask of Amontillado are all

    exceptional stories with a whole lot of suspense. What makes them suspenseful is the literary

    devices discussed. Suspense makes these stories captivating, and keeps the reader interested.

    Work Cited
    Popescu 3

    Christie, Agatha. And Then There Were None. New York, Harper, 2011.

    Poe, Edgar Allan. The Cask of Amontillado, Edgar Allan Poe: Storyteller. English Teaching

    Division, 1988

    Poe, Edgar Allan The Tell-Tale Heart, Edgar Allan Poe: Storyteller. English Teaching

    Division, 1988

    Welcome to the Purdue OWL. Purdue OWL: MLA Formatting and Style Guide,

    https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/22/.

    You might also like