How is tension created in The tell tale hearts and The black cat? Essay

How is tension created in The tell tale hearts and The black cat?In this essay I am going to study the short stories the black catand the tell tale heart create verbally by famous writer Edgar Allen Poe andsee how tension is created in the two tales.Both tales are written in a gothic horror musical genre and Poes intentionfor this was to chill and unsettle the translateer, to make them inhabitwhat was going to happen next, as if it was really happening. Poesucceeds in doing this by the content of the tales, partly being thesupernatural and the tension he creates, which plays a major mapping inboth. He creates this tension by using several different techniquesincluding plot, characterisation and many stylistic devices.One way that Poe creates tension is the plot of the flooring and where isit set. The tell tale heart is set in the middle of nowhere and lateat night, when it is dark outside. This automatically makes the readeruneasy, as nighttime and duskiness is emblematic of dark and bad deeds.Poe mentions more than once that it is set about midnight and thatit is dark, black as pitch, he keeps reminding the reader of this,as he knows it is symbolic and the reader will be wary of this.Criminals will often act upon this time, as they are more likely toget away with the crime, as they cannot be seen as easily. People aremost wary of little things, sounds and sights like shadows in the darkand will be on edge. Darkness and nighttime are famously scary andunsafe, portrayed in novels and films as when everything bad happensand now is the stereotypical view. The darkness seems like adisability, vision is not fully available, and the capitulum starts sowander as to if anything could be round the corner... ...it his name.Both the stories were written more than 100 years ago, in 1843. Theyare so old that when they were written no other genre of story like itwas around at the time. They were original for the time they werewritten and set the standard for future writers. Poe invented this newgenre and his writing skills and techniques form scratch and were thefirst chilling, gothic horror stories ever written, which adds to thereason of why they are so effective. Because no one had ever readanything like it before, and in a scense the stories were ahead of thetime because of the effect they had.Poes work is popular worldwide and still his stories of this genreappear chilling as they are written in a old style that is not used asmuch today, but this is effective and one knows that they would havehad fifty-fifty more impact at the time they were written.