How does the mood and tone of the literary text develop a particular theme?

Question

Find mood and tone by annotating for setting, characters, symbols, and word choice. Mood is how the overall feeling in the text and tone is the author's attitude toward the subject.

Answer 1

The mood and tone of a literary text can help to develop a particular theme by creating a particular atmosphere or emotional response in the reader. The mood of a text is the overall feeling or atmosphere that is created by the words and descriptions used in the text. It can be happy, sad, fearful, peaceful, etc. The tone, on the other hand, refers to the author's attitude or perspective towards the subject matter of the text. It can be serious, humorous, sarcastic, etc.

Annotating for setting, characters, symbols, and word choice can help to identify the mood and tone of a text. The setting of a text, or the time and place in which the story takes place, can contribute to the mood by creating a particular atmosphere or setting the stage for the events of the story. The characters and their actions and interactions can also contribute to the mood by revealing their emotions and attitudes. Symbols, or objects or ideas that stand for something else, can also contribute to the mood by representing deeper themes or emotions. And the word choice of the author, or the specific words and language used in the text, can also contribute to the mood by creating a particular atmosphere or emphasizing certain emotions or attitudes.



By identifying and analyzing the mood and tone of a text, you can better understand the themes that are being developed and how they are being conveyed to the reader. This can help you to gain a deeper understanding of the text and its message.

Answer 2

As a starting point, let's revisit how mood and tone are defined as literary elements and/or literary devices. You can generally think of tone as "how the author feels" based on how they choose their plot, characters, and especially their word choice and syntax. Mood can be generally described as "how the audience (you) is made to feel" as a result of those same choices. To understand mood and tone, word choice and syntax are particularly important, since they are the most subtle and, at the same time, most powerful tools the author has to create the desired experience, in comparison to more readily apparent elements like plot and characters.

It may be helpful to consider how you use word choice and syntax in your own communications—your text messages to your mom and your emails to your teachers likely look a little (or a lot) different from your texts to your friends. This is because you, as the author of the communication, determine the tone of the communication based on your audience.

For a more literary exploration, consider how different genres' authors choose words and syntax according to their purpose. In a dystopian novel revolving around brutal control methods employed by an authoritarian post-apocalyptic government, the words and syntax will necessarily be different (and therefore, the tone and mood will be entirely different) than in a satirical novel about American ruling class in the 21st century. Same goes for a sweeping romance set in a tropical paradise. It may seem obvious that the mood and tone of such works would be different, but teachers force students to complete assignments like these to help them see and then explain what would otherwise be an automatic cognitive and analytical process they undergo when reading literature. Such assignments help you recognize how the author controls that process, and then to correctly explain how and why the author's choices are (or are not) effective.

As the prompt suggests, annotation is an important strategy for detecting, synthesizing, and analyzing mood and tone. The prompt provides specific elements for analysis here (setting, characters, symbols, and word choice), so focus your annotation accordingly. Rather than writing mini-essays in the margins of your source text, develop or use your own existing system to signal items of interest. For example, you could decide that you will underline any aspects of mood or tone that you notice in regards to setting; you will highlight in bright pink any aspects of mood or tone that you notice in regards to word choice; etc. Annotating shorthand will help you quickly read and focus on specific details to answer the prompt while maintaining high-level comprehension of the text as a whole.