The Tell-Tale Heart 'And Lamb To The Slaughter'

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A major aspect of dark romanticism is the shock effect and suspense the reader undergoes while reading these types of works. The best gothic authors create suspense and thrill very well. Two great examples of stories built with suspense are, “The Tell Tale Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe and “Lamb to the Slaughter” by Roald Dahl. A Majority of the plot in these stories is advanced by descriptions and actions of the main character. Dahl and Poe exploit this plot device by limiting and conversely offering us information about the main characters. Using the characters in this way, the authors create dramatic and situational irony to deliver the shock and suspense.

Dramatic irony fulfills the suspense element of exciting dark literature. The major instance …show more content…
Without the bang that situational irony adds, the stories would be left lackluster with no peak. Poe includes situational irony at the perfect time in the story. He lets the story smolder slowly, and when it is at it’s hottest point, he extinguishes it and changes everything. The extinguishing refers to the mental breakdown of the narrator in “The Tell Tale Heart” at the end of the book, where he admits to killing the old man, contradicting the general ending that Poe pointed at earlier in the story. The narrator is subtly struggling internally from the start of the book, it seems to the reader that the narrator is in control and will get away with the murder, but Poe brings out the subtle struggle to shock the reader into reevaluating the beginning of the story. “Lamb to the Slaughter” shocks the reader by abruptly having the wife do something completely opposite in relation to the beginning of the story. The wife “...simply walked up behind [the husband] without any pause...” and “brought [the leg of lamb] down as hard as she could on the back of [the husband’s] head.” The plot line spikes up and then falls down for the rest of the story, maybe Dahl even spiked the heart rate of the reader by shifting the story so
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