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Style
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:
Throughout The Nickel Boys, Whitehead adopts a mostly objective tone to illustrate plot points and character interactions. Readers may expect Whitehead to have a sympathetic tone when writing about Elwood, his leading protagonist, but overall, the authorial point of view is quite detached.
Instead, Whitehead evokes sympathy for Elwood (and sympathy for Elwood’s tragic death) through the character of Turner, who lives as Elwood for the remainder of his life as an homage to his memory and legacy. Further, details of Nickel Academy are made more horrifying by Whitehead’s plain-spoken manner of narration: he does not adopt any air of fantasy throughout the novel, particularly because his novel takes inspiration from the real-life history of the Dozier School.
However, even though the omniscient narrator’s tone is largely objective and unsympathetic, the narrator manages to speak to the strength of the human spirit through complex development of individual characters. The Nickel Boys is not devoid of emotion, nor is it devoid of meaning. Profound meaning appears in the stories themselves and in the rich details that Whitehead records—the meaning does not appear from the tone of any subjective narrator. By maintaining a distance between narrator and character, Whitehead presents the story of The Nickel Boys with a greater objectivity and a greater seriousness towards its complex and difficult subject matter.
