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Edgar Allan Poe - Narratives of Fear

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“There are two kinds of fear: rational and irrational-or in simpler terms, fears that make sense and fears that don’t.” - Lemony Snicket. The reason I think this applies to the story is because does the reader ever find out why he’s so afraid of the eye? Or what caused this fear? I think that’s what Lemony Snicket means, that some fears don’t have to have a reason. Edgar Allan Poe keeps the reader in the suspense by the use of time, using great detail, and having it in first person narrative. The use of time in this story is very unpredictable. In the very beginning it’s pretty docile, he talks in slow time about how he watches the man sleep every night and how it can take hours to just get his head in. When he is talking in slow time, I can almost feel his cautiousness and his stealthiness when he is sneaking in. I think what slow time is when I get to see thoughts more, and not actions and when he’s taking a long time to do something. Fast time to me is when I can feel him going insane, yelling, thrashing about, and killing the old man. The first time that a good example of fast time in the story was when the old man woke up and he saw the eye. That’s why he killed the man. After he’s dead and under the floorboards, he starts thinking he can hear the man’s heartbeat and that starts driving him insane. When he is going insane he starts talking very fast, like to the police for example. He starts feeling guilty about the dead body beneath the floorboards. Even though the story is in print, it feels like I hear him screaming to himself. So I think this kept me in suspense by seeing how he was sneaky and how he was going mad. A huge part that kept me in suspense was the use of detail. Edgar Allan Poe made the main character so afraid of the eye that he described his blood ran cold and he went pale. It was the little things that made a huge difference. Such as when he would just describe the creak of a door hinge

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