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Metaphors
Definition of Mood
The mood of a piece of writing is its general atmosphere or emotional complexion—in short, the array of feelings the work evokes in the reader. Every aspect of a piece of writing... read full definition
The mood of a piece of writing is its general atmosphere or emotional complexion—in short, the array of feelings the work evokes in the reader. Every aspect... read full definition
The mood of a piece of writing is its general atmosphere or emotional complexion—in short, the array of feelings the work evokes... read full definition
Mood
Explanation and Analysis:
The mood of Sing, Unburied, Sing remains tense and sorrowful across the entire novel. Suffering—and the potential for future suffering— fill the atmosphere from the opening pages and shape how every scene unfolds. The reader is never allowed to relax into the story. Instead, they’re constantly confronted with fresh anxiety and suffering from one narrator or another.
The road trip to Parchman to pick up Jojo and Kayla’s father feels exhausting even before it starts. Each leg of the journey introduces new dangers or obstacles, and there’s a feeling of constant risk that settles over the whole endeavor. Ward piles on descriptions of the heat and the stench of vomit in the confined space of the car to make the reader feel claustrophobic and uncomfortable. Jojo feels helpless in the face of Kayla’s illness and discomfort and Leonie’s inability to take proper care of them. When Richie unexpectedly joins the party on their way back from Parchman, the atmosphere feels even more tense and strange.
After the first chapter, the supernatural elements of the story feel much closer to readers and the mood becomes more unsettled. Readers get the strong sense that the veil between the spirit world and the real world has grown dangerously thin. Even as Jojo begins to understand Richie’s story in the context of Pop’s tales of Parchman, the mood does not lighten. The climactic scene in which Given, Richie, Leonie, and Jojo struggle over Mam dying feels painfully tragic and disjointed. Although things return to something resembling normalcy afterward, the mood of the book still feels unpleasantly eerie. Jojo hasn’t been able to save Richie from his imprisonment on the mortal plane. Instead, Jojo and Kayla learn that ghosts of Black people like Richie—that is, the ghosts of people who also died untimely and violent deaths because of racism and the legacy of enslavement—cluster in the trees all around them.
Related Themes:
