Before everything gets challenging, let’s watch this! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v =GNWRr2nUmvg TONE, MOOD and ATMOSPHERE Analysis Tone • is an attitude of a writer toward a subject or an audience. • Tone is generally conveyed through the choice of words, or the viewpoint of a writer on a particular subject. • Example: Unfortunately, the uproar awoke Mr. Jones, who sprang out of bed, making sure that there was a fox in the yard. He seized the gun which always stood in a corner of his bedroom, and let fly a charge of number 6 shot into the darkness. The pellets buried themselves in the wall of the barn and the meeting broke up hurriedly. Everyone fled to his own sleeping-place. The birds jumped on to their perches, the animals settled down in the straw, and the whole farm was asleep in a moment. What tone do you think does the writer want to achieve here? Outline some words that help in achieving the tone. Functions of Tone • decides how the readers read a literary piece, and how they should feel while they are reading it. • It stimulates the readers to read a piece of literature as a serious, comical, spectacular, or distressing manner. • lends shape and life to a piece of literature because it creates a mood • bestows voice to characters, and throws light on the personalities and dispositions of characters that readers understand better. Mood • • is a literary element that evokes certain feelings or vibes in readers through words and descriptions. Mood is developed in a literary piece through various methods, including setting, theme, tone. Mood I. Setting creates mood example 1. “As soon as the light in the bedroom went out there was a stirring and a fluttering all through the farm buildings.” 2. “The river, reflecting the clear blue of the sky, glistened and sparkled as it flowed noiselessly on.” What mood is created by the above settings? Mood Creating Mood through Tone example: • “My sight is failing,” she said finally. “Even when I was young I could not have read what was written there. But it appears to me that that wall looks different. Are the Seven Commandments the same as they used to be, Benjamin?” • How did the excerpt make you feel? Atmosphere • is a type of feeling that readers get from a narrative, based on details such as setting, background, objects, and foreshadowing. • used to describe the feeling or vibe—the awkwardness, the creepiness, the bursting energy—that is imposed upon us in a physical environment, situation or space e.g. "room", "Times Square", "haunted house“ • the setting (environment) of a text is what establishes the atmosphere. • Settings are usually constructed via the description of objects in the setting e.g. a creaking floorboard in the haunted house Example 1 Show through description what you have in mind. Let’s analyse • Techniques: Honking cars in New York City, the bright bill boards, and the sea of people (these aren’t actually techniques; they’re examples of imagery, and we’ll talk about that very soon in the course) • Atmosphere bustling, dynamic, energetic • Mood: awe, excitement Both atmosphere and mood refer to feelings, but there’s a small difference. -The atmosphere is an external feeling coming from the physical environment. - The mood is the internal feeling of the reader. - The external feeling induces the excitement in the reader and thereby influences the mood. Example 2 Show through description what you have in mind. What is the atmosphere? How do you feel? How to distinguish atmosphere and tone Entirely tonal “This city is so disgusting and infested. Ugh! I would never go there!” Entirely atmospheric “The silent air of the city had a dusty, stagnant feel to it, as if the pulsing river of life that had once coursed through its archways and corridors were now impeded, blocked, by the mounds of dusty rubble.” • Lifeless atmosphere—focus is on the physical setting How to distinguish atmosphere and tone Combination of both tone and atmosphere “The silent city was a dilapidated, defiled mess, a collection of infested rubble that seemed to be screaming helplessly into the heavy, dusty air for the return of human life.” • Disgusted tone and lifeless atmosphere When to analyse tone or atmosphere? Tone: • Analyse tone when the voice shows a subjective attitude towards something—a character, a theme or an object. • One exception is a factual tone, but a factual tone still indicates the narrator’s serious attitude towards that something. Atmosphere: • Atmosphere is appropriate when the voice has a neutral attitude and yet we feel an emotion as the reader. How is tone related to atmosphere and mood? How is tone related to atmosphere and mood? the techniques are at the start of the analysis 'pipeline' or process; • the tone and atmosphere are the intermediate 'feelings' and 'sounds' that we get from these techniques; • and then the ultimate end goal is the mood of the reader--how they feel as a result of the techniques, as explained via the intermediaries of tone and atmosphere. • More Examples Tonal or Atmospheric? Give evidence “It was the most frightening hour of my life! I crept slowly along the wall, making sure he—or whoever or whatever he or it was—couldn’t hear me. I was so certain he, or it, was right there that my heart beat like a thumping elephant…halfexpecting something to jump out at me from the bushes.” More Examples Tonal or Atmospheric? Give Evidence “The night was cold. A silver sliver of moonlight pierced the clouds here and there so that the garden was completely shrouded in darkness in some places and yet naked and exposed in others. Luke kept close to the wall as he crept slowly, slowly, towards what he thought was the thing. Suddenly, he stopped. He stared intently at the bushes and braced himself for the worst, as if expecting some unworldly monster to run out from under those dense leaves and bite him.” Now, let’s analyse the tone, mood and atmosphere in George Orwell’s Animal Farm… Let’s get down to work!
