Previous
Style
Definition of Tone
The tone of a piece of writing is its general character or attitude, which might be cheerful or depressive, sarcastic or sincere, comical or mournful, praising or critical, and so on. For instance... read full definition
The tone of a piece of writing is its general character or attitude, which might be cheerful or depressive, sarcastic or sincere, comical or mournful, praising or critical... read full definition
The tone of a piece of writing is its general character or attitude, which might be cheerful or depressive, sarcastic or sincere, comical... read full definition
Tone
Explanation and Analysis:
The tone of “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” shifts depending on which character(s) the omniscient narrator is focusing on in a given moment or scene. When channeling the judgmental—and sometimes overtly cruel—townspeople, the narrator’s tone becomes critical, as seen in the following passage (in which the narrator compares the spider woman to the angel):
A spectacle like [the spider woman], full of so much human truth and with such a fearful lesson, was bound to defeat without even trying that of a haughty angel who scarcely deigned to look at mortals
The tone of this sentence is judgmental, as seen in the way the narrator describes the spider woman as “full of so much human truth” and judges the angel as “haughty” for “scarcely deign[ing] to look at mortals.” Readers know, by this point, that the “mortals” the angel is refusing to look at are the people locking him in a chicken coop and, in some cases, torturing him, so the accusation of haughtiness is clearly unfounded.
The tone notably switches in other moments, such as when the narrator describes the angel being “befuddled by the hellish heat of the oil lamps and sacramental candles” that the townspeople placed along the outside of the chicken coop. Here the narrator channels the angel’s feelings, rather than the towsnpeople’s, when describing the heat of the lamps as “hellish.”
By moving between the perspectives of different characters, and changing the tone along with these shifts, Marquez demonstrates just how unnecessarily cruel the townspeople are, and just how victimized (and patient) the angel is.
Related Themes:
