Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Alexis Johnson
Davenport
English 9H
Within stories, authors commonly use techniques to create suspense. Suspense drives the
reader through the story because the reader is curious and wants answers. The short stories The
Cask of Amontillado, The Lady or The Tiger, and The Most Dangerous Game all use
different techniques to create suspense such as red herrings, cliffhangers, and setting.
Throughout The Cask of Amontillado, the author Edgar Allan Poe utilizes the
technique of red herrings to create suspense. Red herrings throw the reader off track of the
central idea. For example, one red herring used is the wine. At the beginning of the story it states,
He liked to drink good wine, and indeed drank much of itI too knew old wines well (Poe
68). The reader, throughout the story was convinced Montresor would poison Fortunato with
poison in the wine. However, Montresor actually used the wine to lure Fortunato and killed
Fortunato is a totally unexpected way. For instance, Before Fortunato could guess what was
happening, I closed the lock and chained him tightly to the wall (Poe 71). The red herring
technique created suspense because the reader was waiting for one thing to happen, but an
entirely different thing happened. In conclusion, one technique used to create suspense was red
herrings.
The short story The Lady or The Tiger by Frank Stockton creates suspense by leaving
the reader with a cliffhanger. A cliffhanger leaves the audience with an unanswered question.
This technique adds suspense to the story. For example, Without the slightest hesitation, he
went to the door on the right and opened it (Stockton 3). The quote leaves the reader wondering
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what was behind the right door. To continue, this question lingers to the end of the story. For
instance, And so I leave it with all of you: which came out of the door the lady or the tiger?
(Stockton 4). By making this the end of the story, the author created suspense. The reader is
never truly sure what came out of the right door. Overall, the cliffhanger technique in The Lady
Within The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell, suspense is created by using
setting. The eerie, dark setting makes the reader anticipate bad things. For example, Even
cannibals wouldnt live in such a God-forsaken place (Connell 1). Starting from the first page of
the short story, the audience is engulfed by nerves because of the dark, isolated island setting.
Furthermore, The lights of the chateau were out now, and it was dark and silentThere
weaving in and out of shadow, were black, noiseless forms; the hounds (Connell 10).
Rainsfords high room and dark, guarded surroundings make the reader on-edge. The story has
now reached a suspenseful moment where the reader is anxious to see how the mysterious setting
foreplays into the plot. In conclusion, the setting in The Most Dangerous Game was a
Overall, different techniques are used in stores to form the element of suspense. Suspense
leads the reader to the end of the story because the reader wants answers. In conclusion, the
short stories The Cask of Amontillado, The Lady or The Tiger, and The Most Dangerous
Game use different techniques to create suspense such as red herrings, cliffhangers, and setting.
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Works Cited
Connell, Richard Edward. The Most Dangerous Game. Mankato, MN: Creative Education,
2001. Print.
Poe, Edgar, and Bryan Glaser. The Cask of Amontillado, Edgar Allan Poe: Storyteller.
Stockton, Frank. The Lady or The Tiger And Other Stories. New York: Charles Scribers Sons,
1914. Print.