'The short story is an ideal form for writers who wantto create a sense of horror and suspense.' Discuss this statement withreference to two or more stories you have studied

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‘The short story is an ideal form for writers who want to create a sense of horror and suspense.’ Discuss this statement with reference to two or more stories you have studied

A novel is divided into different chapters and usually has different plots to focus on. In a novel there are lots of characters and the time scale is constantly changing throughout. Because there is more than one theme and there are different messages coming across of combined themes, makes the novel denser and more complicated to understand and to take in all the description.

Ambrose Bierce wrote a lot of short stories and some we have studied and analysed. In a short story there is usually only one plot and the event usually carries on in the same setting. There are usually a couple of characters and one hidden message which makes the short stories more to the point and very direct.

As I was analysing the short stories by Bierce, I realised that most of the characters in them were male and most of the stories contained physicians. Looking over Bierce’s background I was able to see that Bierce was brought up in a male dominated area where women were secondary characters. I assume this is why Bierce’s main characters are male and the female characters only play a secondary part in the setting.

He had a son who committed suicide and a son who drank himself to death. I think this is why Bierce put physicians in most of his stories. The physicians don’t know when the victims of the stories are about to die, so maybe Bierce could relate to these because no physician could warn him about his sons dying.

Throughout Bierce’s stories he has a good use of horror and suspense. He does this by being very concise and to the point. He also makes more impact on us as he uses pathetic thalacy. He does this by describing the weather in such a way that reflects on the mood of the setting or on the characters feelings. For example, in ‘One Summer night’ the weather is thundery to reflect on the scary atmosphere.

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I found that the stories are frightening because they are more into psychological horror. Bierce’s stories make us think of the supernatural and things that cannot be rationalised and things that we cannot see or understand. The horror and suspense and things that are not tangible he creates in an incredible way through his use of characters and the establishing atmosphere.

The language used by Bierce is very effective and highly descriptive as he uses a different for of English language giving every last detail. This is because he wrote this in the nineteen hundreds and the English ...

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