In each of these 11 stories, the mood is weighed down with an overarching feeling of eerie unease. Gloom, wariness, fear and horror enter each story in turn, as Poe deliberately utilizes pacing to build a cacophony of emotions for the reader. Whether the narrative is a doomed romance, a historical thriller, or a detective story, each tale in Poe’s Stories is emotionally gripping and tantalizing to read.
There is an element of mystery present in each of these stories, and as the tales progress, the reader journeys through a series of cyclical questions, discoveries and revelations, each more terrifying than the next. One of the most consistent through-lines between these 11 stories is the question of whether the narrators’ interpretations of events are true or the result of madness. Tales with seemingly supernatural elements may just as easily be the ravings of a character with mental illness. As each of the narrators succumbs to the events of their stories—to paranoia, to illness, to grief, to ghost ships, etc.—it becomes the job of the reader to determine what interpretation of events most suits their reading of the story. This creates a new, fluid, interactive mood for each reader, each time they read the story, as with every subsequent reading their interpretation may change.
