The Elements of Suspense

All Stories Contain Certain Elements

• Plot
• Character
• Setting

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• Dialogue
• Narrative

Suspense

Anxiety or apprehension resulting from an uncertain, undecided, or mysterious situation

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Dictionary.com

In suspense there must be an unknown; a suspicion, a mystery, a danger we expect

Suspense (mystery, intrigue, tension) �is built with:

• Foreshadowing
• Facts
• Innuendo
• Atmosphere/Tone and Mood
• Action

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Ways to deepen suspense…

Dreams

• foreshadowing �what may happen
• showing the character’s�deepest fears, his haunting past

Ways to deepen suspense…

Clues

• journals / diaries / letters / notes / pictures, etc.
• physical evidence that can be used to determine time of death, how, and where

Ways to deepen �suspense…

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The Weather

• the season can �match or contrast the characters’ emotional state

Ways to deepen suspense…

The Senses

• the smell of blood, the stench of an alley
• the taste of fear
• reaction to finding a dead body
• the feel of blood-soaked clothing

Ways to deepen suspense…

The Villain

• his/her motivations or intentions
• simple greed, �jealousy, money
• the complicated �serial killer mind

Ways to deepen suspense…

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Other characters

• plant red herrings
• shift suspicion onto them

Themes Concerning People

• Terror inflicted upon the often unknowing and innocent victim
• Innocent people caught up in events they cannot control
• Transference of guilt: innocent character’s failings are transferred to another character and magnified
• Explored the compatibility of men and women (especially a mother figure)
• The wrong man

Themes Concerning the Mind

• Guilt (real or the appearance of it)
• Redemption
• Early films reflected the political climate of Europe during the war
• Preferred to use suspense rather than surprise

The Nightmarish Mind of �Edgar Allen Poe

Background

• Born 1809-1849
• His mother died during his youth and his father abandoned them
• After the death of his grandmother, he married his 13-year-old cousin, Virginia in 1835
• Virginia died in 1847
• Died in 1849

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Education of Poe

• Entered and dropped from both the University of Virginia and West Point
• Ran into debt and started borrowing money, gambling and getting deeper into debt

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Writing Style of Poe

• Wrote in a Gothic Style
• Deep and intense
• Explorations of а world of dream and of nightmare
• In his stories the past is darker, more ominous and oppresses his heroes and heroines

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Poe’s Characters

• Many of his characters are filled with madness
• Obsessed with the irrational side of the mind

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Edgar Allen Poe’s

The Tell-Tale

General Information

• Setting
• The story opens with the narrator telling readers that he is not mad. His narrative is supposed to be a vehicle to show he is not insane.

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• The story is set in a house occupied by the narrator and an old man during the mid 1800’s.

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General Information

• Genre
• Horror story and

psychological thriller

• Story and Style
• The Tell Tale Heart is one of Poe’s shortest stories. It’s lack of detail only adds to its suspense by creating a mood of paranoia for the reader that mirrors the feelings of the narrator

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Literary Focus

• Point of View
• The story is told in first-person point of view by an unreliable narrator.
• The narrator is obviously deranged, even though he declares at the outset that he is sane.
• As in many of his other short stories, Poe does not name the narrator.

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Literary Focus

• Irony
• The irony of the story stems from the narrator’s claims of sanity being disproved by his own claims.
• Although he proclaims himself to be too calm to be a madman, he is defeated by a noise that may be interpreted as the beating of his own heart

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Literary Focus

• Imagery and Repetition
• Poe’s use of sound throughout the narrative, combined by using repetition adds to the story’s suspense.
• The effect is a building of noise in the readers’ ears and a building of tension

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Themes

• Mankind’s wicked side–another self
• Mankind’s paranoia
• Mankind’s Fear
• Mental Pressure and Fatigue
• Appearance vs. Reality
• Dark Appearances vs. Dark Thoughts

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Character Analysis

The Narrator

• Deranged unnamed person who tries to convince the reader that he is sane.
• He is intelligent and has the ability to commit a crime with skill and precision
• He nagged by what he calls heightened senses, something that is a condition found in several various Poe stories 

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Character Analysis

Character Analysis

• The Old Man:

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• Neighbor:

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• Three Policemen:

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Seemingly harmless elder who has a hideous "evil eye" that unnerves the narrator.  �

Person who hears a shriek coming from the house of the narrator and the old man, then reports it to the police.  �

Officers who search the narrator's house after a neighbor reports hearing a shriek. �