Unit 4 · Topic 4.6

4.6 Tone: how word choice reveals a narrator's attitude

Tone is a narrator's or speaker's attitude toward a subject, and you find it in word choice and details. A narrator's background and perspective shape that attitude. You learn to name tones precisely, more exactly than "happy" or "sad," and to point to the words that create them.

Key terms

tone
attitude
diction
connotation
mood

Tone is attitude

Tone is how the narrator, speaker or character feels about what they're describing: admiring, mocking, bitter, tender, amused, detached. It comes from their perspective: their background, experiences and values. Two narrators can describe the same dinner party, and one sounds charmed while the other sounds scornful.

Tone and mood are different. Tone belongs to the narrator. Mood is what the reader feels (see 4.3).

Descriptive words carry attitude

Adjectives and adverbs don't just describe; they judge. "A modest house" and "a shabby house" might be the same building, but one narrator sounds kind and the other sounds critical. To find tone, collect the descriptive words and ask what attitude they share.

Look at adjectives and adverbs first.
Look at what the narrator chooses to mention and what they skip.
Look at sentence style: short and blunt, long and flowing, full of exclamations?
Look for exaggeration or understatement.

A vocabulary for tone

Instead of	Try
happy	content, joyful, giddy, playful, relieved
sad	wistful, mournful, regretful, resigned, despairing
angry	indignant, bitter, resentful, furious, scornful
funny	wry, ironic, mocking, sly, gently amused
neutral	detached, clinical, matter-of-fact, restrained

Irony and tone

Irony is a gap between what's said and what's meant, or between what's expected and what happens. An ironic tone means the narrator says one thing while signaling another. Irony is tricky because the words on the surface may sound positive. Ask whether the narrator, or the story, could really mean the words straight.

Tone can shift

A passage may begin admiring and end bitter, or start playful and turn serious. When the tone shifts, find the word or sentence where it turns. That turn is often the passage's key moment.

Where tone comes from

A narrator's tone grows out of who they are. A narrator who grew up poor may describe a mansion with suspicion; one who grew up in it may describe it with boredom. A narrator who has lost someone may describe a wedding with a quiet ache. When you name a tone, try to explain where it comes from: "The narrator's scorn for the party grows out of her years as a servant in houses like this one."

Characters have tones too. When a character speaks, their attitude toward the person they're talking to, or the subject they're discussing, is part of their characterization. A character who answers a serious question with a joke is telling you something about themselves.

Worked examples

Try each one yourself first, then open the solution.

Example 1
A last line with a double tone
Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour" (1894) follows Louise Mallard in the hour after she hears that her husband has died. Alone in her room, she realizes she will now be free to live for herself, and she feels "a feverish triumph." Then her husband walks through the front door, unharmed; he was never in the accident. The story's last sentence reads: "When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease—of the joy that kills." What is the tone of this final sentence, and how is it created?
Show the solutionHide the solution
1. Step 1: Notice whose words these are. The narrator reports what "the doctors" said. The doctors believe the shock of joy at seeing her husband alive killed her.
2. Step 2: Compare with what the reader knows. We have just seen that her real joy was her freedom, and that her husband's return took it away.
3. Step 3: Name the tone: ironic, even a little bitter, because the official explanation gets her feelings exactly backward.
4. Step 4: Notice the dash. It sets "of the joy that kills" apart, as if quoting a cliché the narrator doesn't believe.
Answer: Model paragraph: Chopin ends the story on a note of sharp irony by letting the doctors explain a death they don't understand. The narrator reports flatly that "they said she had died of heart disease," and then the dash sets off their diagnosis, "of the joy that kills," like a familiar phrase repeated without thought. The reader knows better. Mrs. Mallard's joy was not at her husband's return but at the freedom his supposed death had given her; it was losing that joy, not feeling it, that killed her. By reporting the doctors' words without correcting them, the narrator lets their confident mistake speak for a whole society that could not imagine a wife being anything but glad to see her husband.

Common mistakes

Using vague tone words like "happy," "sad" or "negative." Choose a precise word and back it up.
Confusing tone (the narrator's attitude) with mood (the reader's feeling).
Taking ironic statements at face value. Ask whether the narrator could really mean them.

On the exam

Tone questions are common in multiple choice. Find the answer whose tone word fits the whole passage and whose intensity matches it: "mildly amused" and "contemptuous" are very different.
In essays, explaining a shift in tone gives your analysis a clear structure.

Connected topics

Videos

"What is Tone in Literature?": A Literary Guide for English Students and Teachers
OSU School of Writing, Literature and FilmWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)
Analyzing tone through word choice | Reading | Khan Academy
Khan AcademyWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)
How to Determine a Writer's Tone
TolentinoTeaching (Resources for English Teachers)Watch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)
AP English Language: Tone
Marco LearningWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)
Tone: Explanation, Effects, Example | AP Lang Rhetorical Strategies
Ms. Peer EditorWatch on YouTube (opens in a new tab)

Check yourself

4 questions on 4.6 Tone: how word choice reveals a narrator's attitude. Pick an answer to see if you got it, and why.

“Jose, come here.” Laura caught hold of her sister’s sleeve and dragged her through the kitchen to the other side of the green baize door. There she paused and leaned against it. “Jose!” she said, horrified, “however are we going to stop everything?”

“Stop everything, Laura!” cried Jose in astonishment. “What do you mean?”

“Stop the garden-party, of course.” Why did Jose pretend?

But Jose was still more amazed. “Stop the garden-party? My dear Laura, don’t be so absurd. Of course we can’t do anything of the kind. Nobody expects us to. Don’t be so extravagant.”

“But we can’t possibly have a garden-party with a man dead just outside the front gate.”

That really was extravagant, for the little cottages were in a lane to themselves at the very bottom of a steep rise that led up to the house. A broad road ran between. True, they were far too near. They were the greatest possible eyesore, and they had no right to be in that neighbourhood at all. They were little mean dwellings painted a chocolate brown. In the garden patches there was nothing but cabbage stalks, sick hens and tomato cans. The very smoke coming out of their chimneys was poverty-stricken. Little rags and shreds of smoke, so unlike the great silvery plumes that uncurled from the Sheridans’ chimneys. Washerwomen lived in the lane and sweeps and a cobbler, and a man whose house-front was studded all over with minute bird-cages. Children swarmed. When the Sheridans were little they were forbidden to set foot there because of the revolting language and of what they might catch. But since they were grown up, Laura and Laurie on their prowls sometimes walked through. It was disgusting and sordid. They came out with a shudder. But still one must go everywhere; one must see everything. So through they went.

“And just think of what the band would sound like to that poor woman,” said Laura.

“Oh, Laura!” Jose began to be seriously annoyed. “If you’re going to stop a band playing every time some one has an accident, you’ll lead a very strenuous life. I’m every bit as sorry about it as you. I feel just as sympathetic.” Her eyes hardened. She looked at her sister just as she used to when they were little and fighting together. “You won’t bring a drunken workman back to life by being sentimental,” she said softly.

“Drunk! Who said he was drunk?” Laura turned furiously on Jose. She said, just as they had used to say on those occasions, “I’m going straight up to tell mother.”

“Do, dear,” cooed Jose.

“Mother, can I come into your room?” Laura turned the big glass door-knob.

“Of course, child. Why, what’s the matter? What’s given you such a colour?” And Mrs. Sheridan turned round from her dressing-table. She was trying on a new hat.

“Mother, a man’s been killed,” began Laura.

“Not in the garden?” interrupted her mother.

“No, no!”

“Oh, what a fright you gave me!” Mrs. Sheridan sighed with relief, and took off the big hat and held it on her knees.

“But listen, mother,” said Laura. Breathless, half-choking, she told the dreadful story. “Of course, we can’t have our party, can we?” she pleaded. “The band and everybody arriving. They’d hear us, mother; they’re nearly neighbours!”

To Laura’s astonishment her mother behaved just like Jose; it was harder to bear because she seemed amused. She refused to take Laura seriously.

“But, my dear child, use your common sense. It’s only by accident we’ve heard of it. If some one had died there normally—and I can’t understand how they keep alive in those poky little holes—we should still be having our party, shouldn’t we?”

Laura had to say “yes” to that, but she felt it was all wrong. She sat down on her mother’s sofa and pinched the cushion frill.

“Mother, isn’t it terribly heartless of us?” she asked.

“Darling!” Mrs. Sheridan got up and came over to her, carrying the hat. Before Laura could stop her she had popped it on. “My child!” said her mother, “the hat is yours. It’s made for you. It’s much too young for me. I have never seen you look such a picture. Look at yourself!” And she held up her hand-mirror.

“But, mother,” Laura began again. She couldn’t look at herself; she turned aside.

Katherine Mansfield, “The Garden Party” (1922), from The Garden Party, and Other Stories (1922)

Question 1 of 4

Jose's line “You won’t bring a drunken workman back to life by being sentimental” and the narrator's report that she “cooed” her answer (paragraphs 8–10) give Jose a tone that is best described as

Home! She looked round the room, reviewing all its familiar objects which she had dusted once a week for so many years, wondering where on earth all the dust came from. Perhaps she would never see again those familiar objects from which she had never dreamed of being divided. And yet during all those years she had never found out the name of the priest whose yellowing photograph hung on the wall above the broken harmonium beside the coloured print of the promises made to Blessed Margaret Mary Alacoque. He had been a school friend of her father. Whenever he showed the photograph to a visitor her father used to pass it with a casual word:

“He is in Melbourne now.”

She had consented to go away, to leave her home. Was that wise? She tried to weigh each side of the question. In her home anyway she had shelter and food; she had those whom she had known all her life about her. Of course she had to work hard, both in the house and at business. What would they say of her in the Stores when they found out that she had run away with a fellow? Say she was a fool, perhaps; and her place would be filled up by advertisement. Miss Gavan would be glad. She had always had an edge on her, especially whenever there were people listening.

“Miss Hill, don’t you see these ladies are waiting?”

“Look lively, Miss Hill, please.”

She would not cry many tears at leaving the Stores.

But in her new home, in a distant unknown country, it would not be like that. Then she would be married—she, Eveline. People would treat her with respect then. She would not be treated as her mother had been. Even now, though she was over nineteen, she sometimes felt herself in danger of her father’s violence. She knew it was that that had given her the palpitations. When they were growing up he had never gone for her like he used to go for Harry and Ernest, because she was a girl; but latterly he had begun to threaten her and say what he would do to her only for her dead mother’s sake. And now she had nobody to protect her. Ernest was dead and Harry, who was in the church decorating business, was nearly always down somewhere in the country. Besides, the invariable squabble for money on Saturday nights had begun to weary her unspeakably. She always gave her entire wages—seven shillings—and Harry always sent up what he could but the trouble was to get any money from her father. He said she used to squander the money, that she had no head, that he wasn’t going to give her his hard-earned money to throw about the streets, and much more, for he was usually fairly bad of a Saturday night. In the end he would give her the money and ask her had she any intention of buying Sunday’s dinner. Then she had to rush out as quickly as she could and do her marketing, holding her black leather purse tightly in her hand as she elbowed her way through the crowds and returning home late under her load of provisions. She had hard work to keep the house together and to see that the two young children who had been left to her charge went to school regularly and got their meals regularly. It was hard work—a hard life—but now that she was about to leave it she did not find it a wholly undesirable life.

James Joyce, “Eveline,” from Dubliners (1914)

Question 2 of 4

The final sentence, “now that she was about to leave it she did not find it a wholly undesirable life,” conveys an attitude that is best described as

Day had broken cold and grey, exceedingly cold and grey, when the man turned aside from the main Yukon trail and climbed the high earth-bank, where a dim and little-travelled trail led eastward through the fat spruce timberland. It was a steep bank, and he paused for breath at the top, excusing the act to himself by looking at his watch. It was nine o’clock. There was no sun nor hint of sun, though there was not a cloud in the sky. It was a clear day, and yet there seemed an intangible pall over the face of things, a subtle gloom that made the day dark, and that was due to the absence of sun. This fact did not worry the man. He was used to the lack of sun. It had been days since he had seen the sun, and he knew that a few more days must pass before that cheerful orb, due south, would just peep above the sky-line and dip immediately from view.

But all this—the mysterious, far-reaching hairline trail, the absence of sun from the sky, the tremendous cold, and the strangeness and weirdness of it all—made no impression on the man. It was not because he was long used to it. He was a new-comer in the land, a chechaquo, and this was his first winter. The trouble with him was that he was without imagination. He was quick and alert in the things of life, but only in the things, and not in the significances. Fifty degrees below zero meant eighty odd degrees of frost. Such fact impressed him as being cold and uncomfortable, and that was all. It did not lead him to meditate upon his frailty as a creature of temperature, and upon man’s frailty in general, able only to live within certain narrow limits of heat and cold; and from there on it did not lead him to the conjectural field of immortality and man’s place in the universe. Fifty degrees below zero stood for a bite of frost that hurt and that must be guarded against by the use of mittens, ear-flaps, warm moccasins, and thick socks. Fifty degrees below zero was to him just precisely fifty degrees below zero. That there should be anything more to it than that was a thought that never entered his head.

As he turned to go on, he spat speculatively. There was a sharp, explosive crackle that startled him. He spat again. And again, in the air, before it could fall to the snow, the spittle crackled. He knew that at fifty below spittle crackled on the snow, but this spittle had crackled in the air. Undoubtedly it was colder than fifty below—how much colder he did not know. But the temperature did not matter. He was bound for the old claim on the left fork of Henderson Creek, where the boys were already. They had come over across the divide from the Indian Creek country, while he had come the roundabout way to take a look at the possibilities of getting out logs in the spring from the islands in the Yukon. He would be in to camp by six o’clock; a bit after dark, it was true, but the boys would be there, a fire would be going, and a hot supper would be ready. As for lunch, he pressed his hand against the protruding bundle under his jacket. It was also under his shirt, wrapped up in a handkerchief and lying against the naked skin. It was the only way to keep the biscuits from freezing. He smiled agreeably to himself as he thought of those biscuits, each cut open and sopped in bacon grease, and each enclosing a generous slice of fried bacon.

At the man’s heels trotted a dog, a big native husky, the proper wolf-dog, grey-coated and without any visible or temperamental difference from its brother, the wild wolf. The animal was depressed by the tremendous cold. It knew that it was no time for travelling. Its instinct told it a truer tale than was told to the man by the man’s judgment. In reality, it was not merely colder than fifty below zero; it was colder than sixty below, than seventy below. It was seventy-five below zero. Since the freezing-point is thirty-two above zero, it meant that one hundred and seven degrees of frost obtained. The dog did not know anything about thermometers. Possibly in its brain there was no sharp consciousness of a condition of very cold such as was in the man’s brain. But the brute had its instinct. It experienced a vague but menacing apprehension that subdued it and made it slink along at the man’s heels, and that made it question eagerly every unwonted movement of the man as if expecting him to go into camp or to seek shelter somewhere and build a fire. The dog had learned fire, and it wanted fire, or else to burrow under the snow and cuddle its warmth away from the air.

Jack London, “To Build a Fire” (1908), from Lost Face (1910)

Question 3 of 4

The man's pleasant thoughts of the camp, the fire and the “biscuits ... sopped in bacon grease” (paragraph 3) come right after his spit crackles in the air. This placement mainly creates

Little Mrs. Sommers one day found herself the unexpected possessor of fifteen dollars. It seemed to her a very large amount of money, and the way in which it stuffed and bulged her worn old porte-monnaie gave her a feeling of importance such as she had not enjoyed for years.

The question of investment was one that occupied her greatly. For a day or two she walked about apparently in a dreamy state, but really absorbed in speculation and calculation. She did not wish to act hastily, to do anything she might afterward regret. But it was during the still hours of the night when she lay awake revolving plans in her mind that she seemed to see her way clearly toward a proper and judicious use of the money.

A dollar or two should be added to the price usually paid for Janie’s shoes, which would insure their lasting an appreciable time longer than they usually did. She would buy so and so many yards of percale for new shirt waists for the boys and Janie and Mag. She had intended to make the old ones do by skilful patching. Mag should have another gown. She had seen some beautiful patterns, veritable bargains in the shop windows. And still there would be left enough for new stockings—two pairs apiece—and what darning that would save for a while! She would get caps for the boys and sailor-hats for the girls. The vision of her little brood looking fresh and dainty and new for once in their lives excited her and made her restless and wakeful with anticipation.

The neighbors sometimes talked of certain “better days” that little Mrs. Sommers had known before she had ever thought of being Mrs. Sommers. She herself indulged in no such morbid retrospection. She had no time—no second of time to devote to the past. The needs of the present absorbed her every faculty. A vision of the future like some dim, gaunt monster sometimes appalled her, but luckily to-morrow never comes.

Mrs. Sommers was one who knew the value of bargains; who could stand for hours making her way inch by inch toward the desired object that was selling below cost. She could elbow her way if need be; she had learned to clutch a piece of goods and hold it and stick to it with persistence and determination till her turn came to be served, no matter when it came.

But that day she was a little faint and tired. She had swallowed a light luncheon—no! when she came to think of it, between getting the children fed and the place righted, and preparing herself for the shopping bout, she had actually forgotten to eat any luncheon at all!

She sat herself upon a revolving stool before a counter that was comparatively deserted, trying to gather strength and courage to charge through an eager multitude that was besieging breastworks of shirting and figured lawn. An all-gone limp feeling had come over her and she rested her hand aimlessly upon the counter. She wore no gloves. By degrees she grew aware that her hand had encountered something very soothing, very pleasant to touch. She looked down to see that her hand lay upon a pile of silk stockings. A placard near by announced that they had been reduced in price from two dollars and fifty cents to one dollar and ninety-eight cents; and a young girl who stood behind the counter asked her if she wished to examine their line of silk hosiery. She smiled, just as if she had been asked to inspect a tiara of diamonds with the ultimate view of purchasing it. But she went on feeling the soft, sheeny luxurious things—with both hands now, holding them up to see them glisten, and to feel them glide serpent-like through her fingers.

Two hectic blotches came suddenly into her pale cheeks. She looked up at the girl.

“Do you think there are any eights-and-a-half among these?”

There were any number of eights-and-a-half. In fact, there were more of that size than any other. Here was a light-blue pair; there were some lavender, some all black and various shades of tan and gray. Mrs. Sommers selected a black pair and looked at them very long and closely. She pretended to be examining their texture, which the clerk assured her was excellent.

“A dollar and ninety-eight cents,” she mused aloud. “Well, I’ll take this pair.” She handed the girl a five-dollar bill and waited for her change and for her parcel. What a very small parcel it was! It seemed lost in the depths of her shabby old shopping-bag.

Kate Chopin, “A Pair of Silk Stockings” (1897)

Question 4 of 4

The narrator's attitude toward Mrs. Sommers in the passage is best described as

0 of 4 answered