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Read this quote by author Cassandra Clare.“Yes, she's bleeding to death upstairs, but I thought I'd avoid telling you right away, because I like to draw the suspense out.” (Cassandra Clare, City of Fallen Angels). How does that sentence make you feel? Tense? Suspicious? On edge? It’s supposed to do that. Authors use sentences like these to build suspense. Suspense is the tension that a reader feels while reading a story, and the reason that it’s so hard to put some books down.
The three short stories “The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell, “The Possibility of Evil” by Shirley Jackson, and “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allen Poe all have great amounts of profound suspense and tension. The three stories use the literary techniques of conflict, irony, and foreshadowing to build this suspense.
In Richard Connell’s short story “The Most Dangerous Game” there are numerous suspenseful moments. In this story, the main character Rainsford falls off of a yacht into the treacherous, cold waters while surrounded by darkness, which led him to the rocky shores of “Ship-Trap Island.” Once on the island, Rainsford discovers the terrifying truth of his fate when he meets the island’s sinister inhabitants.
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To begin, Connell creates enthralling tension when he puts Rainsford through his first man versus man conflict when a brute machine of a man answers the door with a gun to Rainsford’s chest. This builds suspense because before Rainsford fell off of the yacht, he and his shipmate discussed the mysterious island and the evil that lurks there.
So, when he is confronted with the brute it makes the reader panicked for his safety. Secondly, tension is formed through man versus man conflict when Rainsford finds himself being hunted by the owner of the island, the villainous General Zaroff. Quick thinking Rainsford adverts the General by building a Maylay Man-Catcher in hopes to kill the General. Rainsford hides in a tree as he awaits the General's approach. The reader begins to fear Rainsford’s decision when it becomes apparent that Zaroff knows his every move. Connell creates tension in the story and sparks intense man vs. man conflict when Rainsford comes across a giant, elaborate house, home to a buff bodyguard who holds a gun to his chest. One more incident that forms tension within the story is when Rainsford runs into General Zaroff’s quicksand trap and has to think extremely quickly to save himself from Zaroff, who was approaching quickly. Rainsford swiftly constructs a Burmese Tiger Pit to trap his hunter, all while hearing the slowly approaching footsteps and smelling the expensive cigarette smoke of the General. Connell shows how intense Rainsford’s situation is by saying “He knew his pursuer was coming; he heard the padding sound of feet on the soft earth, and the night breeze brought him the perfume of the general’s cigarette. It seemed to Rainsford that the general was coming with unusual swiftness; he was not feeling his way along, foot by foot.” (Connell, 8). This causes the reader to move to the edge of their seat and raises every hair on the back of their neck as they relate to the panic Rainsford is feeling as he’s trying to build this trap so quickly, and survive the twisted game he’s stuck in. Richard Connell uses these heart-racing moments and many others to create intense tension in his short story, “The Most Dangerous Game.”
Shirley Jackson’s short story, “The Possibility of Evil” also has many suspenseful moments. Jackson creates suspense through the literary technique of irony (a contrast between what is expected and what happens). In this story, a sweet, seemingly perfect older woman named Miss Strangeworth basically runs the small, quaint, happy town she lives in...until strange things start happening to the town’s residents that turn the once sickly sweet atmosphere a bit sourer. Jackson first creates suspense through verbal irony, when Ms. Strangeworth’s friend Martha was acting differently than normal, and stated that she wanted her young daughter to grow up feeling “like a princess” and Miss Strangeworth responds dryly with “How old is Her Highness now?” This creates suspense and tension because according to Ms. Stangeworth, it was not normal for Helen to be acting like that, and it was one of the first incidents where Strangeworth began noticing people acting strangely. This is verbal irony because Helen’s daughter is not royalty, but Miss Strangeworth is implying that she's extremely spoiled. Another type of irony that Jackson utilized was dramatic irony when the reader finds out that everyone in the town had been acting strange due to mean letters that Miss. Strangeworth had been sending out anonymously for (what we can presume has been) quite a while. This is an example of dramatic irony because we know something that other characters in the story (in this case, the other residents of the town) don’t know. This builds an immense amount of suspense because it causes the reader to begin to wonder “How long has this been going on?” and “Does anyone know about what she's doing?” A final example of Jackson using irony to build suspense is at the very end of the story, where situational irony (When something happens that is the opposite of what we thought would happen) builds. Late at night, Miss Strangeworth dropped one of her letters while she’s dropping them off at the post office, something that had never happened before. A group of teenagers picked up the letter and decided to bring it to the man it was addressed to. However, instead of waking up to her usual satisfaction at her job well done, she woke up to the same letter she had dropped, and a note that read “LOOK OUT AT WHAT USED TO BE YOUR ROSES.” This entire section of the story builds suspense because not a single reader expects “perfect, careful, proper” Miss Strangeworth to drop one of her letters at the post office, and even more so, nobody expects someone to ruin something as important and significant as Miss Strangeworth’s prized roses. This keeps the readers on the very edge of their seats as the story becomes unpredictable, with no rhyme or reason as to where the story is going to go next. Jackson’s suspense does a great job at keeping readers on their toes and keeping a reader engrossed until the very last word of the story, and these moments are only a few of the ways she builds that enthralling tension.
Edgar Allen Poe’s short story “The Cask of Amontillado” is yet another story with ample amounts of suspense. Edgar creates suspense using the literary element of foreshadowing. In this story, the protagonist, Montresor, has been wronged immensely by a silly alcoholic, Fortunato. He comes up with an elaborate, sneaky plan to kill Fortunato by luring him into a trap using the expensive rare wine, Amontillado. Our first case of foreshadowing in the story occurs while Montresor is describing his intent to kill Fortunato, and why he deserved it. Montresor says “ I must not only punish, but punish with impunity.” (Poe, 5). This creates suspense by really getting Montresors point across, the point that he is going to kill Fortunato, he is going to do it tonight, and that nobody is ever going to find out. Another incident of foreshadowing that creates suspense is when Montresor tells Fortunato about his family’s history of getting revenge on those who did them wrong. Strolling along their path to the Amontillado, the men discuss Montresor’s family history, and he explains to Fortunato his family motto, “Nemo me impune lacessit.” This means “No one injures me with impunity.” in Latin. This very much foreshadows Fortunato’s grim demise as it implies that the Montresor family has never let anybody get away with harming them...and this new addition isn’t going to either. He’s not going to let Fortunato get away with injuring him with impunity, and he’s preventing that by killing him. A final case of foreshadowing occurs when Montresor quite literally pulls out a trowel and stores it beneath his coat. If Fortunato wasn’t so drunk, he’d probably see this and become scared/suspicious of the true intent of the man he was following, but intoxicated and determined to find the Amontillado, he thinks nothing of it. This pretty obviously foreshadows Montresor’s plan to use that trowel to bury Fortunato to his death. Poe is well known for his gruesome, detailed tales that leave readers with goosebumps, and “The Cask of Amontillado” is most definitely no exception. These are only a glimpse of the suspense in the universes he builds.
Those three stories all build suspense using conflict, irony, and foreshadowing. In “The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell, the conflict slowly but surely raises tension within the story as readers begin to question Zaroff’s true intention and Rainsford’s immediate fate. In “The Possibility of Evil” by Shirley Jackson, irony spikes conflict repeatedly by revealing more and more hints about the unexpected ending of the story, until the readers know something huge that the characters in the story don’t. In “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allen Poe, foreshadowing is used to imply what is going to happen to Fortunato and makes the reader grow more and more anxious as they get closer to discovering Fortunato’s true fate. All of these tales would be bland and unexciting without the suspense that enhances the plot, and neither would any other fiction piece. Next time you’re reading a story, find a moment that houses a lot of ironies, conflict, or foreshadowing, think about how boring that moment would be without those literary elements and suspense that keep you enticed. You’ll be surprised at how much of a difference it would make.
Building Suspense In Short Stories And Other Forms Of Literature. (2024, Feb 18). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/building-suspense-in-short-stories-and-other-forms-of-literature-essay
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