Suspense in literature

Suspense is a literary device that creates a sense of tension or unease in readers. Writers create suspense by carefully withholding information from readers, making them question what will occur next. Readers become more invested in a story when they question what will happen in a story and keep reading until the work’s conclusion.

The paradox of suspense in literature was developed to explain why readers or audiences experience suspense while reading a novel for a second time or repeatedly watching a play. They feel suspense again because human beings cannot remember every detail about what they have read or watched and seek to fill in these gaps in their memory. In other words, because they cannot remember every detail, they are once again drawn into the story, feeling the anxiety and dread that the writer incorporated into the work.

Suspense can be found in all genres of literature but is most common in horror stories and mysteries, genres in which the plot is difficult to predict, and readers must keep guessing throughout the story.

Background

Suspense can be either long- or short-term. Long-term suspense involves the gradual development of tension throughout a narrative by introducing questions early in the story. For example, a reader may keep turning pages to see if a character will find love or achieve their goals. While the reader may ask these questions early in the novel, they may not be answered until the end.

Short-term suspense is caused by sudden spikes in tension throughout the story. These can be created by introducing pivotal moments into the narrative. During these moments, readers are aware that the events taking place will strongly affect other parts of the narrative. Many instances of short-term suspense occur when characters are in immediate danger or involved in dramatic confrontations.

Suspense has been used in writing as far back as 429 BCE in Sophocles’Oedipus Rex, in which Sophocles lets readers be privy to information that Oedipus and his family do not yet know, such as the knowledge that Oedipus has killed his own father.

The authors of Gothic novels in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries incorporated suspense into their work, which was characterized by its gloomy settings. Examples are The Castle of Otranto (1764) by Horace Walpole and Frankenstein (1818) by Mary Shelley. Both novels created unease and fear in readers. Edgar Allen Poe penned suspenseful detective stories such as “The Mystery of Marie Roget” (1842).  

Suspenseful thriller novels appeared in the early twentieth century. These novels had daring and adventurous characters as well as suspenseful twists and turns. They included John Buchan’sThe Thirty-Nine Steps (1915), H.C. McNeile’s Bulldog Drumond (1920).

Authors continued to incorporate suspense into their work in the mid to late twentieth century and the twenty-first century. Thomas Harris’s novel The Silence of the Lambs (1988) created suspense using the serial killer Hannibal Lector, depicted by Anthony Hopkins in the screen adaptation. Other examples are Patricia Highsmith’sThe Talented Mr. Ripley (1955) and Ruth Rendell’sA Judgement in Stone (1977). Examples of twenty-first century suspenseful novels are Gillian Flynn’s novel Gone Girl (2012), in which a husband becomes the prime suspect in his wife’s disappearance, which she staged in part because he has had an affair. Paula Hawkins’s novel The Girl on the Train (2015) uses suspense after a woman who rides a train each day sees a woman kissing a man who is not her husband and then disappears.   

Readers enjoy suspenseful literature because it keeps them focused and anticipating what may happen next. They also enjoy the element of surprise, as suspenseful literature often includes plot twists and turns. Trying to figure out who killed a character or what will happen next in a novel is enjoyable and exciting. Readers often identify with the main character, feeling empathy for the anxiety they experience, and feel relief once their anxiety is resolved and the suspense has ended.

Overview

The writer Edgar Allan Poe is renowned for his skillful use of suspense. In his short story “The Tell-Tale Heart,” (1843) a nameless narrator murders an old man. During the story, the narrator appears to be going insane, leading readers to doubt the accuracy of his version of events. However, despite this, readers feel a sense of dread and unease as the narrator stalks the old man. They wonder whether he will actually kill him. The narrator discusses the old man:  

He had never hurt me. I did not want his money. I think it was his eye. His eye was like the eye of a vulture, the eye of one of those terrible birds that watch and wait while an animal dies, and then fall upon the dead body and pull it to pieces to eat it. When the old man looked at me with his vulture eye a cold feeling went up and down my back; even my blood became cold. And so, I finally decided I had to kill the old man and close that eye forever!

The narrator kills the old man, but this is not the end of the story. He carefully dismembers the body, hiding its parts under the floorboards. He becomes convinced that he can hear the old man’s heart beating under the floor. While he is able to convince police officers that he had nothing to do with the old man’s disappearance, he thinks the sound is getting louder and louder and eventually confesses, ending the suspense in the story:

 No! They heard! I was certain of it. They knew! Now it was they who were playing a game with me. I was suffering more than I could bear, from their smiles, and from that sound. Louder, louder, louder! Suddenly I could bear it no longer. I pointed at the boards and cried, “Yes! Yes, I killed him. Pull up the boards and you shall see! I killed him. But why does his heart not stop beating?! Why does it not stop!?”

The famous author Stephen King routinely uses suspense in his horror and thriller novels. In Misery (1987), King’s main character, Paul Sheldon, finishes writing the last installment of a series of romance novels featuring the character Misery Chastain. Paul is eager to move on to something else and writes a crime novel called Fast Cars. After completing it, Paul gets drunk and decides to drive to Los Angeles. He gets caught in a snowstorm and involved in an accident. He is rescued by Annie Wilkes, a former nurse who is devoted to the Misery series. Both of Paul’s legs are broken but Annie refuses to take him to a hospital, keeping him instead in her guest bedroom and high on codeine-based painkillers, which he becomes addicted to. Paul soon realizes that Annie is mentally ill. When she learns that Misery is killed in the last installment of the romance series, she leaves Paul alone for two days. He has no food, water, or painkillers, which his body now craves. When she returns, she tells him to destroy the Fast Cars manuscript, or she will not give him more painkillers. She brings him a typewriter and insists that he write a new Misery novel bringing the main character back from the dead. King’s use of suspense is so poignant that readers feel Paul’s distress and pain.  

When Paul manages to escape his room using a wheelchair, he searches the house for more painkillers. He discovers newspaper clippings about people who have been murdered and realizes that Annie is a serial killer. She has killed her roommate, her father, and her neighbors, as well as many elderly patients when she worked as a nurse. She has also killed eleven infants and has stood trial for one of their deaths but was acquitted. Annie continues to hurt Paul, and the reader is left wondering whether he can escape before she kills him.

The Woman in the Window is a 2018 suspenseful thriller by A.J. Finn. Dr. Anna Fox was in a traumatic car accident. After this, she becomes reclusive, remaining inside her New York City home. When she witnesses a murder across the street. However, the family she sees denies that any murder has taken place and the police do not believe Fox’s story. Eventually, Anna speaks to Ethan, the son in the family that lives across the street. Ethan explains that his adopted mother Jane killed his biological mother, Katie. Jane and his adoptive father hid the body and lied to the police. When Anna realizes that Ethan is the killer, she is certain that he plans to kill her as well.

Bibliography

Callaghan, Fija. “What Is Suspense? Definition & Examples in Literature.” Scribophile, www.scribophile.com/academy/what-is-suspense. Accessed 13 June 2024.

Delatorre, Pablo, et al. “Confronting a Paradox: A New Perspective of the Impact of Uncertainty in Suspense.” Frontiers in Psychology, 2018, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6092602/. Accessed 13 June 2024.

Lehne, Moritz, et al. “Reading a Suspenseful Literary Text Activates Brain Areas Related to Social Cognition and Predictive Inference.” PLOS One, 2015, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4422438/. Accessed 13 June 2024.

Magher, Maria. “How Does Edgar Allen Poe Keep the Reader in Suspense in “The Tell-Tale Heart”?” Seattle Pi, education.seattlepi.com/tone-irvings-short-story-the-legend-sleepy-hollow-5373.html. Accessed 13 June 2024.

“What Is a Narrative in Literature? Definition, Examples of Literary Narrative.” Woodhead Publishing, www.woodheadpublishing.com/literary-devices/narrative. Accessed 13 June 2024.