Suspense  

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"To pass from the work of Mrs. Radcliffe to that of Matthew Gregory Lewis is to leave "the novel of suspense" which depends for part of its effect on the human instinct of curiosity. for "the novel of terror," which works almost entirely on the even stronger and more primitive instinct of fear."--The Tale of Terror (1921) by Edith Birkhead

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Suspense is a state of mental uncertainty, anxiety, being undecided, or being doubtful. In a dramatic work, suspense is the anticipation of the outcome of a plot or of the solution to an uncertainty, puzzle, or mystery, particularly as it affects a character for whom one has sympathy. However, suspense is not exclusive to fiction.

It may operate whenever there is a perceived suspended drama or a chain of cause is left in doubt, with tension being a primary emotion felt as part of the situation.

In the kind of suspense described by film director Alfred Hitchcock, an audience experiences suspense when they expect something bad to happen and have (or believe they have) a superior perspective on events in the drama's hierarchy of knowledge, yet they are powerless to intervene to prevent it from happening. Films having a lot of suspense belong in the thriller genre.

In broader definitions of suspense, this emotion arises when someone is aware of his lack of knowledge about the development of a meaningful event; thus, suspense is a combination of anticipation and uncertainty dealing with the obscurity of the future. In terms of narrative expectations, it may be contrasted with mystery or curiosity and surprise.

Suspense could however be some small event in a person's life, such as a child anticipating an answer to a request they've made, e.g., "May I get the kitty?". Therefore, suspense may be experienced to different degrees.

Contents

Etymology

Suspendere is derived from sub ("under") + pendere ("hanging") .

According to Greek philosopher Aristotle in his book Poetics, suspense is an important building block of literature. In very broad terms, it consists of having some real danger looming and a ray of hope. The two common outcomes are:

  • the danger hitting, whereby the audience will feel sorrowful
  • the hopes being realised, whereby the audience will first feel joy, then satisfaction.

If there is no hope, the audience will feel despair. Something other than the danger happening is a deus ex machina.

  • the build up of tension. Most of the time in a narrative, play, movie, etc.

Paradox of suspense

Some authors have tried to explain the "paradox of suspense", namely: a narrative tension that remains effective even when uncertainty is neutralized, because repeat audiences know exactly how the story resolves (see Gerrig 1989, Walton 1990, Yanal 1996, Brewer 1996, Baroni 2007). Some theories assume that true repeat audiences are extremely rare because, in reiteration, we usually forget many details of the story and the interest arises due to these holes of memory (see Brewer); others claim that uncertainty remains even for often told stories because, during the immersion in the fictional world, we forget fictionally what we know factually (Walton) or because we expect fictional worlds to look like real world, where exact repetition of an event is impossible (Gerrig).

The position of Yanal is more radical and postulates that narrative tension that remains effective in true repetition should be clearly distinguished from genuine suspense, because uncertainty is part of the definition of suspense. Baroni (2007: 279-295) proposes to name rappel this kind of suspense whose excitement relies on the ability of the audience to anticipate perfectly what is to come, a precognition that is particularly enjoyable for children dealing with well-known fairy tales. Baroni adds that another kind of suspense without uncertainty can emerge with the occasional contradiction between what the reader knows about the future (cognition) and what he desires (volition), especially in tragedy, when the protagonist eventually dies or fails (suspense par contradiction).

Zeigarnik effect

In psychology, the Zeigarnik effect states that people remember uncompleted or interrupted tasks better than completed tasks. In Gestalt psychology, the Zeigarnik effect has been used to demonstrate the general presence of Gestalt phenomena: not just appearing as perceptual effects, but also present in cognition. Soviet psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik (1900-1988) first studied the phenomenon after her professor, Gestalt psychologist Kurt Lewin, noticed that a waiter had better recollections of still unpaid orders. However, several thorough replication studies done later in other countries failed to replicate Zeigarnik's results. In those studies no significant recall effects were found for completed and interrupted tasks (e.g., Van Bergen, A., 1968. For a review see Kiebel, Elizabeth M., 2009 ).

The Zeigarnik effect suggests that students who suspend their studying, during which they do unrelated activities (such as studying unrelated subjects or playing games), will remember material better than students who complete study sessions without a break (Zeigarnik, 1927; McKinney 1935).

It is a type of memory bias.

In drama

In literature, films, television, and plays, suspense is a major device for securing and maintaining interest. It may be of several major types: in one, the outcome is uncertain and the suspense resides in the question of who, what, or how; in another, the outcome is inevitable from foregoing events, and the suspense resides in the audience's anxious or frightened anticipation in the question of when.<ref>Template:Harvtxt</ref> Readers feel suspense when they are deeply curious about what will happen next, or when they know what is likely to happen but don’t know how it will happen. Even in historical fiction, with characters whose life stories are well known, the why usually brings suspense to the novel.

An adjunct to suspense is foreshadowing, as found in hints of national crisis or revolution in Isabel Allende’s House of the Spirits (1991).

Examples

  • In Sophocles' Oedipus Rex (429 B.C.), suspense is achieved through a withholding of the knowledge that Oedipus himself has killed Laius, his father. During the play, the spectators, aware that Oedipus will eventually make the discovery, share the hero's uncertainties and fears as he pursues the truth of his own past.
  • In George Washington Cable's story "Jean-ah Poquelin" (1875), the reader wants to know the cause of the strange smell and the unexplained disappearance of a brother.
  • In Mark Twain's Pudd'nhead Wilson (1895), the reader anticipates the outcome of the switching of a black infant with a white infant.
  • In Ernest J. Gaines's A Gathering of Old Men (1983), the reader waits for the court's decision at a murder trial.

In popular media

In thrillers, suspense is the key element authors use to leave the reader or viewer hanging, trying to figure out what will happen next. The effect is especially strong when the work ends without actually revealing what happens next in the storyline.

Suspense is what gives a person the "on-edge" feeling. Suspense builds in order to make those final moments, no matter how short, the most memorable. The suspense in a story just keeps the person hooked into reading or watching more until the climax is reached, and the thrill and amusement of the suspension finally come to a close.

The tension doesn't have to be in the form of the bad guy stalking the hero. It can be much simpler, much less dramatic, but still make the person keep reading or watching. Suspense is about conflict, about the obstacles between the hero and his goal.

The suspense of a story may be the point at which the reader or viewer feels more eager to know the end, and what would happen next. It is often referred to in literature as the climax; when characters and events reach a high complexity. The suspense in the story is the most important element, which was never ignored by writers throughout the ages.

See also




Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Suspense" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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