Alfred Hitchcock once said, “Mystery is an intellectual process… but suspense is essentially an emotional process.” This quote is very accurate, especially when reading a suspenseful story or novel. With the addition of suspense, you feel like you are in the story experiencing all of the drama with the characters themselves. In “The Monkey’s Paw” by W.W. Jacobs and “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe, the cause-and-effect relationships between Mr. and Mrs. White and the monkey’s paw and the man and the old man’s eye caused a feeling of suspense.
In “The Monkey’s Paw” we see Mr. and Mrs. White’s connection with the paw and how it affects the story. Mr. and Mrs. White get introduced to the paw by an old friend of Mr. White’s who tells them…show more content… White fears bringing back his son because he is afraid of the paw and its magic. Now he seems to be more afraid of his wife’s reaction. Because he gives in to his wife’s demands the most suspenseful part of the story begins. Without the monkey’s paw, Mr. White couldn’t have made his first wish and if he couldn’t have made his first wish his son would still be alive, since his son would still be alive, there would be no suspense.
In “The Tell-Tale Heart” the man’s hatred for the old man’s eye causes his to go crazy. In the beginning we learn that the man doesn’t hate the old man, but he is afraid of his eye and decides to get rid of it by killing him. He finally does the deed, but continues to hear the old man’s heart beat which makes him crazier and confesses he killed him. The man trying to kill the old man is what creates suspense in the story. The man preparing to kill the old man sets a suspenseful situation.
I had my head in, and was about to open the lantern, when my thumb slipped upon the tin fastening, and the old man sprang up in bed, crying out --"Who's there?" I kept quite still and said nothing. For a whole hour I did not move a muscle, and in the meantime I did not hear him lie down. He was still sitting up in the bed listening; --just as I have done, night after night, hearkening to the death watches in the wall. (Poe…show more content… If the man wasn’t obsessed with his eye then he would have no reason to kill the old man. During “The Tell-Tale Heart” it was the old man’s eye that bothered the man, it’s what drove him mad, and his eye is what helped create suspense in the story and what led to his demise.
The old man’s eye in “The Tell-Tale Heart” and the monkey’s paw in “The Monkey’s Paw” are what helped create suspense in the cause-and-effect relationships between the man and Mr. and Mrs. White. Without the relationships between Mr. and Mrs. White and the monkey’s paw and the man and the old man’s eye are what create a suspenseful story. As Alfred Hitchcock said suspense is an emotional
