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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 “A Good Man is Hard to Find” is multifaceted. Because the narrator stays close to the grandmother’s perspective, the tone, at times, is judgmental and moralistic in the way that the grandmother is judgmental and moralistic. Take the following passage, for example, which comes as the family stops at the Tower filling station and dance hall during their road trip:
The children’s mother put a dime in the machine and played “The Tennessee Waltz,” and the grandmother said that tune always made her want to dance. She asked Bailey if he would like to dance but he only glared at her. He didn’t have a naturally sunny disposition like she did and trips made him nervous.
Here the grandmother asks her son Bailey to dance with her and then, when he says no, the narrator states, “He didn’t have a naturally sunny disposition like she did and trips made him nervous.” The judgment here—that the grandmother has “a naturally sunny disposition” and Bailey does not—is clearly coming from the grandmother, not the narrator, as readers know by now that the grandmother very much does not have a sunny countenance (as seen in her constant moralizing and arguing with her family members).
There is another layer to the tone of the story, which is the fact that O’Connor, as the writer, is intentionally channeling the grandmother’s judgmental tone in order to highlight her hypocrisy. The narrator’s tone might be un-self-aware and moralizing in these moments of merging with the grandmother, but the tone of the story as a whole is self-aware and sarcastic. In other words, readers can tell that they are supposed to be judging the grandmother for her hypocritical ways.
Related Themes:
