Tone and Mood in the Story The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County
Choose a story assigned this week and answer the following, supporting your ideas with quotes from the primary text:
Part I: What is the tone? What mood is created?
Part II: Using the same story from part one, locate at least 3 uses of figurative language in the text. Explain the importance of each, focusing on how it adds meaning to the story.
https://owl(dot)excelsior(dot)edu/orc/what-to-do-while-reading/vocabulary-strategies/figurative-language/
https://twain(dot)lib(dot)virginia(dot)edu/projects/price/frog.htm
https://poestories(dot)com/read/blackcat
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“The Conversion of the Jews” by Philip Roth
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Style
This week, we will be tackling a broad range of ideas that authors weave into the story to help create their characters, the world they live in, and the conflict that they face. The author carefully crafts all of these elements and wraps them up with a term called “style.” Simply put, style is the author’s unique way of using word choice, literary devices, and figurative language to create the tone and mood of the text.
Tone and Mood
The tone and mood are closely related but are two distinct things. Tone refers to the author’s attitude toward the characters or subject created by word choice, action, and the setting. Mood refers to the feeling created in the reader, which is also created by the word choice, actions of characters, and the setting.
The author creates the tone and mood not only through word choice, action, and the setting, but also through the use of figurative language. Figurative language is a group of literary devices such as symbolism, foreshadowing, similes, metaphors, and imagery. The video on figurative language included in this week's Reading and Resources gives definitions and examples of figurative language used in literature.
While all genres of literature contain these elements, they are especially important in a short story. Remember that a short story is compact. There is not as much time and space to create the characters, the main idea, or the conflict. Figurative language and word choice become extremely important for an author in a short text to layer meaning and add depth in as little space as possible. In a novel, the author can use paragraphs to describe a location or a character, but the same level of description has to happen in only a few words or lines to capture the reader in a short story.
Questions for Uncovering Style
Here are some questions to help uncover the style:
Are there comparisons used to help give detail and descriptions?
Is there an object mentioned multiple times?
How do I feel when reading?
What imagery is used—what evokes the senses of smell, sight, hearing, taste, or touch?
Is the setting symbolic?
Are any of the major or minor characters symbolic?
Is the writing formal or informal?
Does the text make you laugh or feel sad?
Professor's Name
Date
The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County
Part I: What is the tone? What mood is created?
Generally, the short story tones are informal and disapproving, combined with a good mixture of exasperation and admiration. The author used an informal tone, such that the conversations in the story are relaxed and casual. The author is trying to converse with the readers as if he were in front of them and telling them the story himself. Twain used the first- and second-person point-of-view. Notably, Twain used "I" and "You" in many of his sentences.
Moreover, there are no unceremonious statements and the words used are colloquial. This is evident in the following statements of Mr. Wheeler:
He never smiled, he never frowned, he never changed his voice from the gentle-flowing key to which he tuned the initial sentence, he never betrayed the slightest suspicion of enthusiasm. (Twain)
An informal tone is also marked by spontaneity, such that when the reader reads this paragraph, the reader will be out of breath due to the lack of long pauses. The words used in this excerpt are straightforward, and the sentence construction is mostly with a simple subject and a simple predicate. Additionally, the author also used spelled-out words during the encounter of the narrator with Mr. Wheeler. Examples of this include "m-o-r-e dust" and "m-o-r-e racket (Twain)."
Conversely, the disapproving tone is evident toward the end of the story. The narrator stated, "But, by your leave, I did not think that a continuation of the history of the enterprising vagabond Jim Smiley would be likely to afford me much information concerning the Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, and so I started away." (Twain). This statement gives the feeling of sarcasm, supporting the disapproving tone of the author.
The exasperated mood is demonstrated through annoyance and sarcasm. The tone signifies irritation in the initial paragraph of the story, where the protagonist has been tricked. This is evident in the following statements:
I have a lurking suspicion that Leonidas W. Smiley is a myth; that my friend never knew such a personage; and that he only conjectured that, if I asked old Wheeler about him, it would remind him of his infamous Jim Smiley, and he would go to work and bore me nearly to death with some infernal reminiscence of him as long and tedious as it should be useless to me. If that was the design, it cer...
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