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Definition of Mood
The mood of a piece of writing is its general atmosphere or emotional complexion—in short, the array of feelings the work evokes in the reader. Every aspect of a piece of writing... read full definition
The mood of a piece of writing is its general atmosphere or emotional complexion—in short, the array of feelings the work evokes in the reader. Every aspect... read full definition
The mood of a piece of writing is its general atmosphere or emotional complexion—in short, the array of feelings the work evokes... read full definition
Chapter 2: The Fire
Explanation and Analysis:
The mood of Kindred is marked by anguish and pain as a result of its focus on the violence of slavery in the United States. Dana, who was raised in 20th-century America, is shocked by the brutality of the violence that she witnesses, which surpasses, she feels, violence as depicted in television and film. On her second trip to the past, for example, Dana witnesses an enslaved man being whipped for the first time:
I had seen people beaten on television and in the movies. I had seen the too-red blood substitute streaked across their backs and heard their well-rehearsed screams. But I hadn’t lain nearby and smelled their sweat or heard them pleading and praying, shamed before their families and themselves. I was probably less prepared for the reality than the child crying not far from me. In fact, she and I were reacting very much alike. My face too was wet with tears. And my mind was darting from one thought to another, trying to tune out the whipping.
Here, Dana reflects with agony upon the bloody scene before her, which surpasses the “well-rehearsed screams” of actors in movies. Butler’s language in this scene is particularly direct and physical, noting the smell of the man’s “sweat,” his desperate pleas, and Dana’s own tears. Butler casts an unflinching eye upon the brutality of life for enslaved people living and working on plantations prior to the American Civil War. Here as elsewhere in the novel, the mood becomes particularly anguished as Dana observes, and later experiences, great suffering on the Weylin Plantation.
Related Themes:
