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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 “The Paper Menagerie” is primarily wistful, with some subtle shifts over the course of the story. The protagonist, Jack, narrates the story of his childhood through his early 20s from some unknown point in the future. While young Jack has moments of joy in the story, narrator Jack mainly zeroes in on the moments of longing or lack in his life. For example, when describing the origami animals that his mother magically breathes life into, Jack focuses on everything that goes wrong, such as the water buffalo collapsing after soaking his legs in soy sauce or a (real-life) bird tearing the ear off the paper tiger.
Later in the story, after young Jack rejects his mother’s Chinese language and culture (thereby rejecting the Chinese parts of himself), the story’s tone takes on a slightly bitter edge. Take the following passage, for example, during which Jack takes time away from college to visit his dying mother in the hospital:
My mind was not in the room. It was the middle of the on-campus recruiting season, and I was focused on resumes, transcripts, and strategically constructed interview schedules. I schemed about how to lie to the corporate recruiters most effectively so that they’d offer to buy me. I understood intellectually that it was terrible to think about this while your mother lay dying. But that understanding didn’t mean I could change how I felt.
The tone here becomes embittered as Jack notes all the things he would rather be doing than spending time with his mother (“resumes, transcripts, and strategically constructed interview schedules”). He states that he is “intellectually” aware that this isn’t an appropriate response to have “while your mother lay dying,” but that that didn’t mean he could change it.
It is also worth noting that Jack has a subtly bitter tone in relation to the on-campus recruiting season, as seen in his description of how he was “schem[ing] about how to lie to the corporate recruiters most effectively so that they’d offer to buy [him].” This language parallels the way that Jack and other characters have described how Jack’s father “bought” his mother via a catalog (and how Jack’s mother “lied” about who she was in order to come to the U.S.). Given Jack’s resentment about his mother’s background, it is easy to read the tone here as bitter and resentful about the hypocritical nature of American society, which seems to think that it is shameful for Chinese women to “sell” themselves but acceptable for American-born people to do so.
The story concludes with a much more loving and earnest tone as Jack reckons with the pain and regret over his estrangement from his mom (as well as his empathy for the painful life that she led) for the first time.
Related Themes:
