distrust of others
syn. distrustful, nervous, fearful, suspicious
From Edgar Allen Poe’s "The Tell-tale Heart":
No doubt I now grew VERY pale; but I talked more fluently, and with a heightened voice. Yet the sound increased -- and what could I do? It was a low, dull quick sound—much such a sound as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I gasped for breath, and yet the officers heard it not. I talked more quickly, more vehemently but the noise steadily increased. I arose and argued about trifles, in a high key and with violent gesticulations; but the noise steadily increased. Why would they not be gone? I paced the floor to and fro with heavy strides, as if excited to fury by the observations of the men, but the noise steadily increased. O God! What could I do? I foamed -- I raved -- I swore! I swung the chair upon which I had been sitting, and grated it upon the boards, but the noise arose over all and continually increased. It grew louder -- louder -- louder! And still the men chatted pleasantly , and smiled. Was it possible they heard not? Almighty God! -- no, no? They heard! -- they suspected! -- they knew! -- they were making a mockery of my horror! -- this I thought, and this I think. But anything was better than this agony! Anything was more tolerable than this derision! I could bear those hypocritical smiles no longer! I felt that I must scream or die! -- and now -- again -- hark! louder! louder! louder! louder! --
"Villains!" I shrieked, "dissemble no more! I admit the deed! -- tear up the planks! -- here, here! -- it is the beating of his hideous heart!"
In his classic short story "The Tell-tale Heart", Edgar Allen Poe tells the tale of one man’s downward spiral into madness and paranoia. Poe begins with a slight aura of tension by making use of long, flowing sentences that shorten as the madman becomes more deranged. As the piece climaxes, the sentences become shorter and repetition increases to convey heightened fear and paranoia. The exclamations become more frequent and finally the sentences become so short that they become the beating of the heart itself. As he admits the deed, the tension seems to vanish as his paranoid thoughts that the policemen are “dissemble[ing]” him reach a horrific conclusion.
Poe, Edgar Allan. "The Tell-Tale Heart." Tell-Tale Heart." The Bedford
Reader. Ed. X.. J. Kennedy, Dorothy M. Kennedy, and Jane E. Aaron. 9th
ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2003. 117-121.