Suspense in Edgar Allan Poe and Shirley Jackson - Term Paper Example

Lecturer: “Suspense in Poe and Jackson” Edgar Allan Poe was categorized as the most influential XIX century American who through his various narratives, that he dared dream and write about, dwelt on what can be described as central to the psyche of Man – that human beings have ever since been viewing, reading and also living the same nightmares and dreams ever since. They have been effective in influencing both American culture and literature, and also in the existing popular entertainment through Hollywood movies based on his works such as The Raven. In the American literary world, his literature is often treated with some condescension and pity with most of his avid readers being in their teenage life. This can be accredited to the actuality that most of his stories were short, interesting and easy enough to be classroom material, or due to their ability at pandering the present sullen morbidity that is characteristic of early adolescence or late childhood. American literature reached its peak maturity in the XIX century through the works of different writers such as Melville and Hawthorne, Thoreau and Emerson, Whitman and Longfellow, Twain and Poe, who was oddly in his own category. He has had a far-reaching influence on not only mass culture, but he has been able to provide rare insights into elite culture. As an innovator, he was quite resourceful: it is evident through his invented modern detective tales such as The Mystery of Marie Roget, The Purloined Letter, and The Murders in the Rue. He, together with Bram Stoker and Mary Shelley, is a progenitor of horror movies (Datlow 59). Poe was always worried a lot about life after death, especially in terms of the body and soul being depicted in the number of his narratives that entailed characters being buried alive, or of corpses having a life as zombies or of characters who were kept, under hypnosis, animate. He was gifted in the creation of small, enduring images that have up to this era remained in the collective psyche of a wide range of audiences. In his work – The Masque of the Red Death – Poe describes an intricate floor plan for the imperial suite of Prince Prospero with the strange design of the ball-room location emanating from the Prince’s eccentric tastes of decoration and his love of the weird. All the seven rooms of irregular shapes add to the suspense of the viewer with there being a sharp turn at every twenty or thirty yard distances, with each turn eliciting a novel effect. All successive rooms had different colors, a sort of progressive journey through a range of garish hues with the last chamber being black. This view only got from a gaze through a window tinted red. The reader is held in suspense due to his/ her vague grasp of the different room’s signature colors (Jackson 67). Soon, the imperial suite becomes the scene of a crime with both the prince and his guests succumbing to a succession of bloody murders committed by an unknown assailant. Furthermore, the architecture entailed in these successive rooms also adds to the sense of suspense due to their eliciting luminal spaces between the notions of reality and illusion. The architecture of the suite, which is complicated, is symbolic of the reader’s limited comprehension. In his other work – The Black Cat – the readers encounter a character who after getting drunk, releases his guilt and self-hatred on his wife’s pet cat by grabbing it but the cat bites him. In revenge, he takes out one of its eyes but this quickly heals, though the cat’s presence is a continuous reminder of his failings. Eventually, though, the narrator gets rid of the cat by hanging it from a tree. There is a twist to this event with his house burning down except for a section of the wall that has sketched on it the image of a giant cat (Datlow 58). Later on, he finds a new cat that has much similarity to the first in a bar and he takes it home. The reason behind this was so as to aid in undoing his previous act of violence. The feline’s appearance eventually changes, with the petite white patch on its furred skin forming the shape of the gallows. The narrator, seeing a prediction of his fate, is also annoyed with the cat’s presence. He later raises his axe so as to kill it, but his wife stops him. Angered into a rage by his wife’s interference, he instead strikes her on her head, killing her instantly. Eventually, the feline is the only witness to this crime, this adding to the suspense. Poe’s other work is – The Tell-Tale Heart – can be compared to Shirley Jackson’s – The Lottery – both of which entail the use of murder pertaining to human death and insanity as good basis for the creation of suspense. On one hand, there is the notion of insanity that pertains to the unpredictable nature of a person’s actions when he/she is crazed, while, on the other hand, is the notion of murder, a capital crime, and, thus, is the greatest loss a human being can endeavor. Both these two elements especially when combined do provide readers with great anxiety due to the inert fear of death. Suspense is created through the combination of a life and death situation; this aided by the fact that control of the occurrences cannot be managed sensibly by the readers (Datlow 24). In The Tell-Tale Heart Poe portrays a driver who is forced to kill an old harmless man due to the driver having experienced a period of madness. The reason behind this homicide is unjustifiable and the innocent man has a facial feature which seems distasteful to the madness elicited by the driver. The unjustifiable murder of the old man provides proof to the driver’s insanity as does the way that the evil thought was conceived and yet not consciously rejected by the driver’s conscience. On her part, Shirley Jackson’s work The Lottery is based on a tradition that has survived the different centuries of history and human sacrifice that is carried out by the natives of a small community who stone a woman to her death so as to have a fruitful crop harvest that year. Here, the sacrifice of a human is seen as enhancing the socio-cultural and physical well being of the majority in society. This phenomenon is often rooted in different ritualistic ceremonies and practices. A form of insanity is also present in this work exemplified by the fact that an innocent life is taken so as to provide for the well being of the rest, rooted in tradition (Jackson 74). In The Tell-Tale Heart, suspense is also brought to the fore by the narrator’s anonymity as he does not talk much about himself letting alone mentioning his name with most of the plot’s narrative being deduced from both his thoughts and deeds. In The Lottery, Jackson’s evil doers are the villagers with a succinct description of the village structure and little knowledge of the peasants adding to the suspense. The victim, Mrs. Tessa, comes into the plot half-way through, with her differences from the rest of the community almost making her lose out on a chance in the lottery. Suspense in Poe’s work is also evident due to the killer’s decision to inform the police of the accident on an impulse, just as he had on an impulse ran over the old man. The reader is unaware, yet yearning to know the next course of action especially by the police. In Jackson’s work, suspense is brought to the fore from the depicted conflict between Tessa and the other villagers. She, Tessa, does offer any form of resistance to her eventual death; this on the account that both herself and her family are not in any danger. Although nearing her death sentence through stoning, Tessa does not protest against the village lottery (Jackson 78). Suspense is also presented through different timing in both narratives. In The Lottery, the plot does not elucidate the possibility of a tragedy until the stoning process and after partaking in the lottery. This is as a result of the use of language and setting so as to deviate from the final outcome. In The Tell-Tale, the suspense is shaped and raised to a higher level through two occurrences: one being during the eighth night when the mad narrator is present in the old man’s room, confident of his triumph in carrying out the homicide. The second occurs when the police arrive and take their sits in the old man’s room. The guilty narrator’s heartbeat that by then is beating at a very fast race almost making him admit his guilt, what he finally does in the end (Datlow 89). In conclusion, both Poe and Jackson are great writers who skillfully used their imagination and, to some extent, life experiences to enrich their various works. Suspense in their works is often elicited after getting deep into their plots’ narratives as there is usually no indication of forthcoming tragedies or incidences. At times, though, there is the depiction of eminent disaster about to occur, but the authors craftily evade these scenes to later on place these different actions at the least expected places/times. Works Cited Datlow, Ellen. Poe:19 New Tales of Suspense, Dark Fantasy, and Horror Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe. Michigan: Solaris, 2009. Print. Jackson, Christine A. The Tell-Tale Art: Poe in Modern Popular Culture. North Carolina: McFarland & Company Inc, 2012. Print. Poe, Edgar Allan. The Tell-Tale Heart. Web. http://www.bompacrazy.com. Read More