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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 Signalman” has a first-person narrator whose skepticism of the signalman’s accounts of the supernatural colors the entirety of the story. His attempts to provide logical alternatives to the signalman’s experiences—such as assuming the man is experiencing the effects of a mental illness—make the reader question the validity of the supernatural accounts. However, the narrator’s skeptical tone is at times qualified by his feelings of fear in response to the gloomy environment or the signalman’s story, such as in this passage:
A disagreeable shudder crept over me, but I did my best against it. It was not to be denied, I rejoined, that this was a remarkable coincidence, calculated deeply to impress his mind. But it was unquestionable that remarkable coincidences did continually occur, and they must be taken into account in dealing with such a subject. Though to be sure I must admit, I added (for I thought I saw that he was going to bring the objection to bear upon me), men of common sense did not allow much for coincidences in making the ordinary calculations of life.
While the narrator tries to maintain an analytical tone by writing the signalman’s accounts off as mere coincidences, he’s unable to be completely unaffected by his ominous atmosphere, which leads him to occasionally adopt a frightened, uncertain tone. This further increases the reader’s uncertainty, as, by the end of the story, the narrator has run out of logical explanations for the strange and supernatural occurrences, leaving the true nature of the story’s events a mystery.
Related Themes:
