Poe was the classic horror writer during the 1800’s. He is known as the first horror writer in the United States. He is also known as the first writer of detective stories. Poe set the precedent for the horror writers in the USA. Stephen King followed in Poe’s footsteps to work in the horror genre. There are many similarities and differences in the two men’s work. The most visible difference is the language of the story. They lived in different time periods which means they used the language that was common during their time. King uses modern words. He uses slang words that people in the 1800’s wouldn’t have a clue about. King writes about sex and swears in his story. For example King writes how Susie is such a bitch.
Poe describes his characters in different words. He uses simple words to describe them. Poe uses long sentences with very little dialogue. One of his sentences make up almost a whole paragraph. Like in the second paragraph. There is only three sentences in the paragraph and no dialogue. King on the other hand, has very short sentences and almost every paragraph has a couple sets of dialogue. King tells the story through the characters speech. Poe tells the story through the explanations not through speech. Even though they have differences, they also have some similarities. Both writers use a part of nature that is out of control to overcome people.
In Poe’s story it was a simple whirlpool while in King’s its was just the flu bug. These things of nature became bigger and destroyed the people in the story. They use nature and people dying to make it suspenseful. They use nature killing people in their stories because it rarely happens in real life. It is usually humans who ruin nature. Readers are more interested in nature because it is more interesting to watch then a human who acts crazy. There are many crazy humans in the world, but not very many crazy nature events in the world. Both of the writers are/were great horror writers of their time. Even though they lived in different times they made their stories great for all people to read.
