Tell Tale Heart Suspense

“The Tell-Tale Heart” could be considered a horror story because it has most of the elements of a horror/suspense story. The story has a frightening atmosphere and that type of feeling continues to build throughout the story, the feeling of panic is conveyed through the way the narrator talks and acts through the story, it contains gore how the narrator acts on the man, we find common fears of many of the people around us and ourselves, and the noises that the narrator would describe cause us fear. This is a horror story and should not be read by people who are easily creeped out, but could be read by anyone because the fear was not strong enough to worry, just the common fears of humans. This story plays with the fears of the common people like being betrayed, authority, even if we did nothing wrong, noises that send chills down the listener's spine, the possibility of us being murdered, and the fear we all have when the paranoia sets in, being watched. We all seem to have one of these fears, may it be pushed down far and viewed as insane by us, or constantly feared and come to visit when we least expect it. These fears like to hide away at times and stories like these like to get them to come out and play for a while. This story brings up rational and irrational fears we have or have had in our lives.
We feel the narrator's panic and fear throughout the story and some can understand the anxiety of a situation where you must stay quiet.
The police and the narrator knowing what they did wrong builds the suspense, making us wonder if they will find out what had happened and who did it. The readers know the narrator must stay silent or something bad may happen, so this also makes people panic and worry about what will happen next and what will be done if he gets caught. This story causes so much stress that if that is all a horror story was based off of, it would be one of the best horror stories to have ever been
written. The violence and gore meter may be low to some, but to others this could be awful for them to read. It doesn’t need to say ,“Even more of the thick, crimson, liquid poured out of the limb that I slowly severed while his bone make a sickening crack”, to be considered gore, it just needs to put the thought of the suffering in your head. It may have gore, but it is more violent than it would seem, murder, dismemberment, and stuffing dismembered parts under the floorboards. In a story, it seems like a situation that could just be thought of as normal, but in real life, this would not be taken lightly and the person would be viewed as criminally insane. People would still be able to argue that there is no gore, but if a story can put images of such horrible things such as severing limbs, that would be considered gore.