Linking Texts

The following text will compare and contrast three short stories. The three stories are: Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Black Cat”, Marghanita Laski’s “The Tower” and lastly, “The Hitchhiker” by the ironically named Anthony Horrowitz. All three of these stories share the same genre and that is ‘horror’. Also they are all short stories.

Despite sharing the same genre these three stories are all very different and all use various techniques the help give the reader a sense of horror which is of course the goal of the writer in all horror stories. In “The Black Cat” it is evident that the writer is using shock as his way of scaring the reader. Edgar Allen Poe takes the unbelievable cruelty of the main character and combines this with the way the man is so desensitized and calm about his vicious acts. This not only creates a sense of shock and horror for the reader but is somewhat humorous in a very black comedy sort of way. In contrast “The Hitchhiker” at first uses a basic and normal way of scaring the reader misleading them to think that there is a boy and a murderer in the car and the boy is the only one that knows. Although the main tactic of creating horror in the story is the twist at the end which is designed to shock the reader as they realise they were on the completely wrong track the whole way along. Anthony Horrowitz was able to mislead the reader by using what is referred to as “red herons”, which is when a writer purposely gives false clues as to the mystery in the story. In comparison “The Tower” uses a different approach except there is still a twist at the end although the twist is a lot more subtle than the one in the “Hitchhiker”. Marghanita Laski created another world in her story giving very subtle clues as to the whereabouts of the woman using confusion to scar the reader. Compared to the other two stories “The Tower” is much more focused on the supernatural side of horror which we can see from the way the woman is compelled to keep going further into the tower. The tower itself even seems to take on its own life form in this short story.

These three short stories are all capable of being successful in horrifying the reader depending on who the reader is. “The Black Cat” would probably be the most likely to give the audience feelings of disgust but not so much fear.