What literary devices are used, and what is their effect in the last two paragraphs of the story?

The final two paragraphs of this story bring the events of the story to a crescendo, and this is reflected in the increasingly fragmented sentence structure and accompanying literary devices. The final paragraph itself is short, as are the sentences within it, suggesting a drumbeat-like rhythm of intensification, as if ultimate doom is drawing ever closer. Poe uses anaphora here, a common rhetorical device which can be heard in the speeches of politicians as a...

The final two paragraphs of this story bring the events of the story to a crescendo, and this is reflected in the increasingly fragmented sentence structure and accompanying literary devices. The final paragraph itself is short, as are the sentences within it, suggesting a drumbeat-like rhythm of intensification, as if ultimate doom is drawing ever closer. Poe uses anaphora here, a common rhetorical device which can be heard in the speeches of politicians as a means of heightening anticipation and audience response: "There was a discordant hum of human voices! There was. . . . There was . . ." and so on. (Anaphora refers to the repetition of the same phrase or sentence structure.) Having heightened anticipation in this way, the author then uses synecdoche to create a final jolt or shock: "an outstretched arm" grasps the narrator. The arm, naturally, represents the whole person to whom it is attached, but the anticipation grows until this person is revealed in the next sentence as General Lasalle. The final sentence of the story is a flat declaration that suggests the outcome was inevitable and cannot be changed: "The Inquisition was in the hands of its enemies."

The tone of the penultimate paragraph draws the reader toward the culmination of the story, but the key literary devices are found in the final paragraph itself. The longer sentences and significant amounts of descriptive detail in the prior paragraph help increase the effect of the devices used later. The devices rely upon the contrast between the preceding paragraph and the subsequent short, sharp sentences detailing revelations.