I am researching Edgar Allen Poe for my project and My thesis is something like HOw Poe Uses the insane narrator to create suspense and terrror. THanks

-- Anonymous, November 10, 2003

Answers

We connect most with the narrator, not his victims. So by having the "insane" narrator helps create suspense and terror easily. We feel the racing heart beat of guilt, the terror becomes one with us. It creates suspense and terror due to the fact that the narrators are usually clearly mad, and are committing murder. By looking through the eyes of the murderer, suspense and terror comes hand in hand.

-- Anonymous, November 10, 2003

By being forced to follow the madman's mind and actions while knowing and willing otherwise the reader is doubly intertwined into the action and thought feeling both the madman's fenzy and the sane man's horror without either one having control over the effect. In fact the madman does not have control, but his efforts keep the reader from any comfortable control or reasonable satisfaction in the order of the plot as well.

-- Anonymous, November 11, 2003