Interpretive Exercise #3: Tone

Here is the third of the interpretive exercises that I would like you to do. Please respond to the prompt below by sending me an email by the due date. Your response should appear in the body of the email, not as an attachment. The subject line should read, “Yourname Imagery Exercise.” I will not give credit for late responses. I will respond to your message to let you know I have received it.

I would like you to do this exercise in relation to the assignment for essay #2, which asks you to explicate an interesting passage from Frankenstein. I hope that you will use this exercise as an opportunity to begin developing your conception of the tone of the passage that you will work on in essay #2.

The term “tone” refers to the distinctive quality of voice that expresses the speaker’s attitude toward or feeling about his or her subject. When assessing the tone of a passage of poetry or prose, try to imagine how the words would actually sound if you heard them spoken aloud. You should be able to imagine applying any comments you make about tone to some person’s spoken words. The tone of a passage, like some person’s spoken words, might be described as harsh and vindictive, hesitant and shy, charming, condescending, distracted, self-important, etc.

I often encourage students to assess tone toward the end of an explication because so many aspects of a passage influence our understanding of its tone. The broad context is important: What is the subject at hand? What do you know about the speaker’s mind and experience? What large elements of the work might influence the way that he or she discusses this subject? But it is just as important to consider the signals that emerge on the level of the sentence: the punctuation marks, the diction, the figurative language.

Consider this exchange that occurs when Victor Frankenstein meets the monster, who speaks first, at the base of Mont Blanc:

The guilty are allowed, by human laws, bloody as they may be, to speak in their own defense before they are condemned. Listen to me, Frankenstein. You accuse me of murder; and yet you would, with a satisfied conscience, destroy your own creature. Oh, praise the eternal justice of man! Yet I ask you not to spare me: listen to me, and then, if you can, and if you will, destroy the work of your hands.

Why do you call to my remembrance circumstances of which I shudder to reflect, that I have been the miserable origin and author? Cursed be the day, abhorred devil, in which you first saw light! Cursed (although I curse myself) be the hands that formed you!

It is pretty clear that the two speakers express themselves in very different tones. We know that Frankenstein has been thrown into a condition of morbid sensitivity by the crimes committed by his creation, and here he explodes in passionate fury. The exclamation points reflect his excitement and anger. His tone is full of violent hatred. We can hear the bitter disgust in his insulting description of the monster as an “abhorred devil.” Part of his hatred is reserved for himself, however; we can hear a strain of guilty self-loathing in the curse he directs toward himself. The monster, on the other hand, speaks in the voice of a relatively calm and dispassionate lawyer as he points out a flaw in Frankenstein’s logic. The argument he constructs has a sharp satiric edge, which becomes audible in the false praise he offers for the “eternal justice of man.” It is softened, on the other hand, by vulnerability. Repeating the phrase, “listen to me,” he is desperate for Frankenstein to acknowledge his suffering.

The objective is to capture the complexity of the tone in the passage you decide to analyze. Try to hear the different notes that creep in from sentence to sentence. Note: Depending on the passage you choose to analyze, there may be a significant difference between feelings experienced in the past and the tone used to describe them in the present. Frankenstein might describe himself during a period of great excitement and enthusiasm, for example, in a tone tinged by sadness and regret.

OK, here is your assignment: I would like you to isolate 4-5 sentences from the passage you want to analyze in Essay #2, type them into a page (being sure to provide a page citation), and then analyze the tone as specifically as possible. Refer to particular words and phrases to support your points. Plan on spending 20-30 minutes writing a couple solid paragraphs.