Suspense in Tell Tale Heart

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in his head, but he eventually got so scared that he confessed to murder.

“Every night about twelve o’clock I slowly open his door….. I stood there quietly.” This is an example of suspenseful word choice that Poe uses in his stories. Poe creates suspense by never really getting to the point. This means that he uses many words such as “slowly,” “suddenly,” “carefully,” and many more like that. The first-person narration is a strong tool used by Poe for creating suspense in story. The reader is never sure what the narrator will do next because he is insane, and not thinking or acting logically. The reader is not sure what is real because the narrator is hallucinating. This builds suspense because it takes the reader time to determine if what is happening is even real. The way in which Poe sets up the scene adds so much suspense throughout the story. Most of what is happening takes place in the dark night, with the narrator creeping around. Poe emphasizes the narrator’s dark and unstable nature and this creates an atmosphere of tension .

Throughout Tell Tale Heart, Edgar Allan Poe uses many strategies to create suspense. His use of extreme descriptions of each event adds to the tension. For example, he said “his eye was like the eye of a vulture, the eye of one of those terrible birds that watch and wait while an animal dies, and then fall upon the dead body and pull it to pieces to eat it,” he provides the reader with an exact description of the events. Poe also uses the technique of having an unreliable narrator to create suspense. This narrator in the story was mentally insane but he had no clue, and if anyone said he was then he would get upset. Finally Poe’s use of point of view is essential. Without the story being told in the first person narrative point of view, Tell Tale Heart would not contain the tension and suspense that it does.