A few days ago
coffeemate

English Language Arts—first answer choosen as best answer!?

What is “tone” and what are some examples of it from stories you’ve read?

Evaluate the effect of the irony on the tone of the piece you have read.

Top 2 Answers
A few days ago
My goldfish ate my homework

Favorite Answer

Tone is the way you say something when you read it, or the tone that you feel the story is being told in – such as you could feel if the narrator is pissed etc.
1

A few days ago
dnldslk
Tone is the “flavor” of a work. It’s the stylistic heat that distinguishes one writer from another and one work from another.

To get a good feeling for what tone is all about, look at works that have particularly strong tones. Works like The Catcher in the Rye. The Bear, by William Faulkner, or anything by William Faulkner, for that matter. Look at Hemingway–again, almost anything, but The Old Man and the Sea is a fine example. Or take the fiery, angry tone of a sermon of Jonathan Edwards. Now contrast THAT with, say, the gentle beatitudes of Jesus in the Bible.

Here’s an excellent way of getting a good feel for tone. Pick a work of literature, such as I’ve mentioned above, and then get ahold of the Cliffnotes summary of same. You’ll noticed that all those Cliffnotes are written in about the same tone. They stick to a pseudo-objective style, so that Holden Caulfield of Salinger is hardly distinguishable from Santiago of Hemingway. Virtually all Cliffnotes are written in one, anonymous style, whereas outstanding works of literature are all different. They are “tonefully” alive and different–and exciting. Cliffnotes and suchlike student cheatsheets do not convey the excitement and vibrancy of the works upon which they’re based–much of said vibrancy owing to the tone of the works.

1