He also adds suspense to the story as he involves the reader and the reader becomes a voyeuristic accomplice. This adds to the suspense as the reader feels like a key element in the murder and they get a view into the murderers mind. The reader has doubts about the protagonist's motives due to the fact that he is mad. This story is a first person narrative story and the theme is believable because of the author's passionate expression of the story.
The setting in this story is in a dark house and mainly in just one room. This gives a claustrophobic sense to the story and dramatically increases the suspense and mystery as it is amplified on a far greater extent than need be to create a mysterious presence and so it draws the reader's attention onto the story a lot more. This also gives an almost tangible effect on the man and his room.
The theme of the play is based mainly on just two characters the old man and the mad man so it gives a predator prey relationship as the mad man is going to kill the old man. This also narrows the focus and keeps the readers attention fully on the characters involved and also portrays a sense of suspense. This also can be affiliated with the fact that the writer uses the reader as a voyeuristic accomplice.
The death of the old man or the mad mans plan shows no logic whatsoever and is focused onto one character, this greatly adds to the suspense as it once again draws the reader into the story and creates a sense mystery as the mad man kills the old man due to his eye being covered by a crust and the fact that he fluctuated from the beating of his heart to the eye shows more illogical thinking.
The writer uses many linguistic tricks to sustain the reader's interest, for example he uses the repetition of sanity to show that the character is insane "How then, am I mad?" He also uses the repetition of words and phrases to show that the characters line of thought is irrational and full of pandemonium. He always includes the reader as it creates more suspense as the reader feels like an accomplice. He uses a mixture of short, sharp sentences for sudden actions and makes use of long sentences with commas, ands, and hyphens to create suspense and show that the character is confused. Poe also makes use of conjunction to hold the readers attention and to build up the atmosphere "And then..." The use of this is kept to a minimum, as Poe doesn't want to wear out its effect!
The second story is written in a scientific style and because it is done like that it draws the reader to the conclusions that everything in it is factual. This also makes the story more realistic and the fact that the author doesn't attempt to force conclusions onto the reader unlike in the previous story where the narrator attempts to convince the reader that he isn't mad. To make this story factual the writer has used names of people and dates to create a more scientific theme to the story. He does this from the start "found earlier in 1896 by Mr Jennings." This makes it more plausible.
The scene is set to a totally opposite scope to that in Poe's story. The setting is in the sea, which is an expansive, vague place that is too large to document. The effect is the same though as the sea is so wide it has a lot that is unknown and there is a fear of the unknown, this only adds to the mystery and suspense that this story creates.
Unlike Poe's story Wells creates a bigger selection of characters and because there is a bigger scope of characters especially when the story is one that has a random murderer and all the characters in the story are possible victims. This adds to the fear factor, as the characters don't know who is next. The story shows that the octopus is a random killer but it is a logical one, which makes it, even more of a scary thought, as a killer with intelligence is worse than one that is stupid.
The theme to this story is the opposite of that of Poe's but it still carries the same underlying effects. It is controlled, calm, logical and scientific so the reader is more inclined to believe it and therefore be shocked as it is both unknown to the common man and to science. The author uses conditional words and phrases to add to the mystery for example "it seems..." or "it might be..."
The author also refuses to have the characters jump to conclusions and these emphases the scientific nature of the prose; it makes it more like a calculated scientific report and hence makes it more believable for the readers.
I believe that Edgar Allen Poe is more successful purely for the reason that I found that his story drew my attention a lot more and kept my interest focused on the story at hand although both authors use many different techniques to grasp and sustain the readers interest.
