![]() ![]() For a long time after he could feed himself, and when all his feathers had grown, Quasimodo retained a sprig of yellow down on his head which gave him the appearance of a rather pompous judge wearing a wig several sizes too small. Owing to his repulsive and obese appearance, Larry suggested we called him Quasimodo and, liking the name without realizing the implications, I agreed. He was the most revolting bird to look at, with his feathers pushing through the wrinkled scarlet skin, mixed with the horrible yellow down that covers baby pigeons and makes them look as through they have been peroxiding their hair. he was still very young and had to be force-fed on bread-and-milk and soaked corn. ![]() In a rather bizarre example of this effect, take a look at this passage from Gerald Durrell’s My Family and Other Animals: Not long after Achilles had been taken from us I obtained another pet from the Rose-beetle Man. Controversial or unreliable narrators frequently produce this split, but it can happen with any narrator, third or first person. Often, tone and mood overlap: a narrator tells a story in a mournful tone, and the mood felt by the reader is sadness the narrator is conversational, and the reader feels part of a special tête-à-tête.īut it is not always so: sometimes narrators’ actual attitudes contrast significantly with the mood of the text, and it is especially at these moments when having two separate words for tone and mood is helpful. Mood, by contrast, focuses on the emotional experience of a reader: what emotion does the text create in readers? How do readers feel? It is this difference in focus on the reader’s emotional experience as opposed to the narrator’s that distinguishes tone and mood. Similar to a speaker’s tone of voice, tone is the emotional tenor that emerges from the narration, and it can shift over the course of the text. Tone refers to the attitude or emotion that a narrator expresses towards the story they are telling. The thorns are intense, but the berries are so good. What are they? What’s the difference? Why do they matter in our writing? Out picking blackberries. I’ve taken on two second-year Language & Literature courses from a colleague, and in a lesson reviewing the myriad ways we might analyze texts, one lovely pair of words emerged that will form the basis for today’s post: The school year has begun, and with most students arrived and out of quarantine, things feel more normal than they have in months. ![]()
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