Explore the ways E.A. Poe uses his narrators to create a sense of terror and suspense

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Explore the ways E.A. Poe uses his narrators to create a sense of terror and suspense

        Throughout all the stories I have read during the course of studying Edgar Allen Poe, the narrating has been fairly similar and a great sense of tension, fear and believability have been created inn all of them. The stories are all written in the first person, so it is more like a story is being told to you by some one, which makes them all more believable.

        In ‘The Black Cat’ and ‘The Tell Tale Heart’, it is something that drives the narrator mad that forces him to commit the murders, and in ‘The Premature Burial’ his fear, being buried alive, is driving him mad. In fact he is being driven over the edge of insanity in all the stories we have studied except two – ‘The Fall of the house of Usher’ and ‘The Pit and the Pendulum’, both in which he is nearly killed. In all of them we learn a lot about the narrator, for example, in ‘The Premature Burial’, we learn about his background, and a lot about catalepsy and his fear of being buried alive.

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        The narrators are very descriptive of the other characters in the stories and this really adds atmosphere, and makes the reader feel as if they are part of the tale. For example, in ‘The Tell Tale Heart’, Poe describes the old man- “One of his eyes resembled that of a vulture- a pale blue eye, with a film over it.”  He often uses similes and metaphors, which also helps and makes symbols using characters or objects he mentions, for example, in ‘The Pit and the Pendulum’, he describes the candles on a table, as angels, next to the jury ...

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