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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 “Gooseberries” is intentionally ambiguous. Chekhov, as a writer, was less interested in answering questions than in raising them, and this certainly holds true for “Gooseberries.” The narrator, when they appear, reports very neutrally on the goings-on in the story, simply describing the setting or the various characters’ surface-level thoughts rather than revealing a specific orientation to the characters or their actions.
Because the majority of “Gooseberries” consists of a monologue—the character Ivan tells his friends the story of his brother’s greed-induced class ascension over the course of an entire evening—it’s worth looking at the tone of his story, too. While Ivan is certainly passionate—including yelling, at points, about the importance of living a “good” life—it’s not entirely clear what he considers a “good” life to be, or if he should be an authority on such matters, given his own unhappy and self-centered life. The following passage captures one of these moments when Ivan uses a moralistic tone:
“To leave town, quit the struggle and noise of life, go and hide in your country place, isn't life, it's egoism, laziness, it's a sort of monasticism, but a monasticism without spiritual endeavor. Man needs, not six feet of earth, not a country place, but the whole earth, the whole of nature, where he can express at liberty all the properties and particularities of his free spirit.”
Ivan’s judgmental, moralistic tone comes across in his critique of people who “hide” in their country estates out of “egoism” and “laziness.” He then pontificates on how people need “not six feet of earth, not a country place, but the whole earth” in order to express their “free spirit.” This is ironic as, later in the story, Ivan admits that his life in the city offers him none of this, and he is just as trapped there as people are in the country.
Related Themes:
