“You Have Won the Game.”: Why Connell Writes Better Suspense Than Poe According to the Oxford English Dictionary, suspense is “a quality in a work of fiction that arouses excited expectation or uncertainty about what may happen” as pertaining to storytelling. “The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell, which accounts the survival of a hunter, Rainsford, as he is prayed by General Zaroff, who kills humans for sport, and “The Cask of Amontillado”, a vengeful tale of its protagonist, Montresor, placing his enemy in a peculiar situation for a murder, by Edgar Allan Poe are short tales recognized for frightening readers with this element. While they both feature suspenseful scenes, Connel may have applied them more effectively than Poe. This…show more content… Unlike previously mentioned aspects, Poe occupies more experience in formulating scenes with an unsettling tone because he generally wrote fiction related to the horror genre. Therefore, he presents adequately eerie scenes during the climax, such as the catacombs setting and murder contraption of the chain and bone wall. By allowing Montresor to provide Fortunato, who was immensely intoxicated from the carnival at the exposition, with alcohol that perpetually increased his oblivity toward his death, the audience empathizes with and becomes anxious over his murder even more; “‘Ha! ha! ha!-he! he! he!-a very good joke indeed-an excellent jest. We will have many a rich laugh about it at the palazzo….’” is one of his final quotes that represents this situation, as he believes his homicide is staged humor due to comprising of intricate apparatuses (Poe 870) However, the overall circumstance, the “subtle, ironic treatment of a passionate but coldly-calculated plot to bury a man alive to satisfy an aristocrat’s honor,” is a highly elementary subject only delved into fully during the conclusion (Benton). The beginning of the story merely serves as vague foreshadowing, such as when Montresor says “I must not only punish, but punish with impunity,” and an alibi for Fortunato misapprehending his murder, as well as the initial setting of “about dusk, one evening, during the supreme madness of the carnival season” (Poe 865-866). In other words, Poe does not include nearly the magnitude of fear in “The Cask of Amontillado” as Connell does in “The Most Dangerous Game.” With that in mind, how disturbing are the scenes expressed by
