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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:
Narrator and character, writer and reader—in Jiko’s words, at least, A Tale for the Time Being makes them different and the same. The novel’s introspective, observant narrator destabilizes the boundaries between themselves and their subjects. Keenly attuned to Ruth’s world, they capture landscapes and sensations with equal detail. They notice the clouds that “[hang] low on the mountains” and choppy, white-crested waves as the storm descends upon Ruth’s island. But they relay more abstract psychological experiences with just as much clarity—Ruth struggles to pull off Jiko’s glasses in her dreams as the “smear of the world began to absorb her, swirling and howling like a whirlwind.” The narrator brings the same precision to describe Ruth’s inner and outer states.
This powerful observation blurs the line between the narrator and Ruth. Both identities begin to bleed together as the novel’s narration continues. “Print is predictable and impersonal, conveying information in a mechanical transaction with the reader’s eye,” the novel notes in Ruth’s section. And yet this observation leaves the speaker’s identity confusingly ambiguous—is this Ruth’s thought or the narrator’s? At other points, the distinctions become still murkier. In another of Ruth’s chapters, the novel observes in passing that “if you go to the Kashima Shrine, you won’t see much, since most of the stone is buried underground.” But the work never specifies whether this is part of Ruth’s dialogue or thoughts, or if the supposedly third-person omniscient narrator has started speaking in the second person. This confusion creates a sense that the narrator and Ruth have almost fused. As the roles of narrator and character smudge together, A Tale for the Time Being suggests a storyteller who has become a participant.
Related Themes:
