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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 narrative tone of The Road is often frustrated if not hopeless, and it vents these emotions most directly through the man himself. The novel’s free indirect discourse merges its impersonal, third-person account with an intimate glimpse into the man’s innermost thoughts, which range from nostalgia to rage.
The man longs for his wife, remembers the wake of his uncle’s oars, and recalls “dreams so rich in color.” And like any mortal trapped in the new wasteland of charred forests and tottering city buildings, he shakes his fists skyward in anger. Raising his head to the sky, the man asks towards God, “Will I see you at the last? Have you a neck by which to throttle you? Have you a heart? Damn you eternally have you a soul? Oh God, he whispered. Oh God.” Confronted with a universe of unimaginable cruelties, he curses the world and questions his faith.
This despair possesses a more reflective side as well. The man shares the narration with another third-person presence, who merges prose with poetry to supplement the novel with a more meditative account. The man’s narration plunges the reader headfirst into raw and spontaneous emotion, while its third-person stance provides a more cosmic view. “There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one’s heart have a common provenance in pain,” this narrator observes. The novel’s aphoristic statements supply a wider, though no less painful, perspective to the tragedy.
This detached, third-person narration is also more deeply attuned to the rare pleasures on this desolate planet. The Road manages to uncover surprising instances of beauty amid this devastation. “Then they set out along the blacktop in the gun-metal light, shuffling through the ash, each the other’s world entire,” the novel describes the father-son pair as they set off onto the road with their carts. From this lonely landscape of desolation, the narrator’s prose may be a source of joy itself.
