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The First Sentence

Decent Essays

When an author writes, it is very important that the first sentence presents the effect the writer wants. The first sentence should set the mood, tone, and give the audience a glimpse or emotional insight on what's to come. Edgar Allen Poe is a master in using the first sentence to generate underlying effects on his audience. The opening sentence of Poe’s The Cask of Amontillado goes “The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as best I could, but when he ventured upon insult I vowed revenge” this immediately set a rather dark tone to the story. From reading that first sentence, audiences knew the type of story that they will be reading. The promise of revenge by the narrator also help set up the potential for future conflicts and leaves …show more content…

The exclamation marks and dashes, repetition of the word “nervous”, and the use “very” and “dreadfully” also serves to exaggerate the situation. It tells readers that the narrator was on edge about something. The narrator is painted with guilt from the get go. The sentence begs readers to question what the narrator had done to be so nervous? It does a great job of keeping the reader on the edge of their seat by creating suspense in the story. From reading the rest of the story, we learn the narrator spent a few nights stalking this old man. We see the narrator spend the majority of his nights observing every little details. The narrator is going mad focusing on the man’s demon eye and heartbeat. Although the narrator has gone mad in the beginning of the story, he gets more nervous towards the end of the story. He is nervous that the police will find out that he killed the man and therefore, showed them what horrible thing he had done. From the very beginning of the story, the reader could tell that something bad had happened and the narrator was panicking because of that

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