One way that Poe creates suspense from the very beginning is by giving us an unreliable
narrator to narrate the events. He opens the narrative by telling us that he himself doesn't
fully trust his senses:
I was sicksick unto death with
that long agony; and when they at length unbound me, and I was permitted to sit, I felt that my
senses were leaving me.
If the narrator himself doesn't
feel that he has full control of his senses and faculties, how can we be sure of the details
that follow? How will he portray the events?
Suspense is further generated by
the setting. Part of the narrator's torture is that his punishment is hidden in
darkness:
At length, with a wild desperation at heart, I
quickly unclosed my eyes. My worst thoughts, then, were confirmed. The blackness of eternal
night encompassed me. I struggled for breath. The intensity of the darkness seemed to oppress
and stifle me. Thewas intolerably close.
The unknown
terrors that lay waiting for the narrator in the darkness...
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