The Cask Of Amontillado And The Raven Comparison Essay

Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Cask of Amontillado” and “The Raven” share many similarities in style and theme despite the fact that one is a short story and the other is a poem. One trait they share is the theme of mysterious horror that creates a dramatic and eerie setting. Another is the troubled and unreliable narrator. Both stories also hold the mentions of death and a kind of madness to them. The stories also share some differences. The works differ, however, in the way that they create the air of suspense, horror, and mystery.
In both “The Raven” and “The Cask of Amontillado”, is that Poe creates an air of dread and horror in the reader by adding in a dark and eerie setting. “The Raven” takes place in an old mansion late at night. The poem features descriptions such as “midnight dreary”, “bleak December”, “dying ember”, and “sad, uncertain rustling” that creates a chilling tone that sets the reader on edge early in. Similarly,
One such difference is the way that the short story and poem create the suspense and eeriness that seems to permeate them. In “The Raven” Poe uses imagery and his choice of words to create the eeriness. He uses words such as “dreary”, “bleak”, “ghost”, and “grave and stern”. To create the suspense, he wrote it to where the poem seemed to gradually speed up with the rising action of the plot, until the reader can almost feel the franticness in the narrator’s mind. In “The Cask of Amontillado” the eeriness is achieved through imagery and setting. The setting is an old Italian crypt with many piles of bones stacked up against the wall and where it is dark and the air is stale, almost giving it a hellish look. The suspense is built up because the reader knows that Montresor is intending to exact revenge on Fortunato but are oblivious as to what. As the setting seems to get darker and darker the reader starts to realize that something bad is going to