In the black cat, we are not quite sure from where the writer is telling, but it appears to be a prison. The house that is used sounds like a fairly normal detached house. In terms of suspense and tension, the location used in ‘The Monkey’s Paw’ is more of what a reader would suspect for a horror story. An isolated are where getting away is nearly impossible or out of the question.
Both stories are structured to create suspense. The Monkey’s Paw has fairly normal or short sentences used throughout the story. By normal I mean sentences that aren’t dragged on, and use one or less conjunctive. When a major incident occurs, you sense the sentences get even shorter, and the flow between them is increased. This helps the reader visualize a frantic scene occurring. An example could be when the son retrieves the paw from the fire. This helps build up suspense, as the reader begins to expect something is going to happen soon. ‘The Black Cat’ uses long-winded sentences, this to helps build suspense and tension, as the reader is left waiting and is fed information slowly. Apart from this, the sentences are also complex and are combined with the choice of words that we are not used to today. Due to this, we may not entirely know what is happening or what has happened. As I said before, information is slowly released, even thought the sentences are long. In effect, the writing is ‘wetting our appetite.’
The writing style and the language used by the writer in ‘The Black Cat,’ makes the main character seem intellectual. We wonder what makes him-the main character-do what he does. By this I mean what led him to killing his cat and his wife. What could change a man so gravely, from being a kind and loving person to a reckless beast. It all can’t be blamed on alcohol. Also, what made him drink so much in the first place? We read on to hopefully acquire answers to the questions in our minds.
In the monkeys paw, the starting of the story has a lot of information and detail. Example could be of how the paw came to be, what it does, and it also hints to us the damage that can be caused by the paw. It goes down to us, of how we interpret information, and what we can pick up. This does reduce the levels of suspense and tension, as we know something is going to go wrong with the use of the paw, and we only have to wait for specific details. Although the beginning keeps us tuned, it does ruin the whole affect of the story. A right balance should be found to keep a gripping story.
The Monkey’s paw uses old words and old styles of language to build authenticity; this also helps the story seem life like. Words such as ‘reverberated’ and ‘parlour’ aren’t used that commonly anymore, and could at times leave the readers confused, and force them to go through stories again, so that they better understand them. This could be time consuming and may also kill the suspense. We do get a fairly clear picture in our minds and can imagine the incidents being played back. These days, people aren’t all that scared of writing and books, as they may be due to films or games. That’s probably because we are used to graphical images and sounds to make us jump and shrill, as that’s how we have been brought up. We need good description so we can use our imaginations to scare ourselves. With the detail and description provided, we can crate an ample picture in our minds, and that helps build up suspense and tension.
The Black Cat isn’t all that descriptive and we can’t really imagine the story so deeply. This hinders the pictures in our minds, and doesn’t help with the suspense and tension build up. The amounts of old and complicated words used are fairly less as compared to the Monkey’s Paw. There are a few such as ‘baroques,’ but not as many and story hindering.
The characters in The Monkeys Paw, father, mother, son and the old friend are probably typical characters. You have the old, strange, mysterious type in the friend who leaves behind the Monkey’s paw, the father and son, who both are over ambitious and the mother, who starts of in the story as calm and understanding person, but quickly changes into an unreasonable, frantic character. The father and son just simply tell us that something is going to go wrong. In a way, it builds up suspense, as we begin to wait for the one action that would start a chain reaction of bad events. Maybe a greater variety of characters, or maybe characters who would act differently than expected could create higher levels of suspense. Such as the mother acting calm through out the story, we would wander why she didn’t respond o the death of her son and this could in turn add suspense.
The characters in the Black Cat, especially the cat itself, build up a lot of suspense and tension. The wife isn’t discussed that greatly in detail, but she does play an important part in the story when she is killed. The two cats used are probably the back bone of the story. They are good characters to have, as one; they are not humans and secondly are great for building tension. An animal is not usually the main character of horror stories. This adds a unique point to the story that makes us the reader want to read on.
The common thing between the two stories is that they have both left us wondering what would probably happen next. We would read sequels if they existed, to clear up any questions, and that’s why it builds up suspense. W.W Jacobs uses short, frantic sentences to build suspense and tension. Edgar Allen Poe uses long-winded sentences to build suspense with not a great deal of detail. I personally feel that both stories don’t pack the suspense needed to scare us nowadays. But out of the two, I would have to say that Edgar Allen Poe is probably the closer of the two to scare us nowadays. We have seen too many zombie related films, but the twists and differences in the Black Cat probably make’s it feel the better story.
