Style, Tone, & Mood in Landlady
Style, tone, and mood in the landlady
Style
Style is the use of literary devices, tone, and mood in a particular way that makes author’s writing recognizable. In another word, the style of writing is the style of author who writes it. The author’s style can be recognized by the following components:
- Personal word choice or vocabulary
- Types of sentences Point of view from which the text is told
Organization of the text
To analyze an author style, we need to consider the point of view, formal or informal writing, structure of text, level of complexity in the writing, and overall tone. By using these features in writing, different meaning of the content are shown to the audience.
Categories of Style
Formal Style
The following are some characters of formal style
- Vocabulary: high-level; business-like
- Organization of text: very structured; perhaps with subtopics
- Audience – usually 3rd-omnisicient point of view
Sentences
- Vocabulary: low-level; perhaps slang; dialogue style
- Organization of text: more so narrative or note-like
- Audience: usually personal (more first or third-limited point of view)
- Sentences: mostly simple or compound sentences
Text usually falls within one of these types of organizational patterns:
- Cause-Effect
- Problem – Solution
- Chronological (sequencing the order of events)
- Compare/Contrast
- Inductive (specific to general)
- Deductive (general to specific)
- Division into categories
- Ranking
Tone
Tone is the author’s attitude toward the writing (his characters, the situation) and the readers. A work of writing can have more than one tone. An example of tone could be both serious and humorous. Tone is set by the setting, choice of vocabulary and other details.
Identifying the tone is all about knowing the definitions of many descriptive vocabulary words. In literature an author sets the tone through words. The possible tones are as boundless as the number of possible emotions a human being can have. Has anyone ever said to you, “Don’t use that tone of voice with me? ” Your tone can change the meaning of what you say. Tone can turn a statement like, “You’re a big help! ” into a genuine compliment or a cruel sarcastic remark. It depends on the context of the story.
Mood
Mood is the general atmosphere created by the author’s words.
It is the feeling the reader gets from reading those words. It may be the same, or it may change from situation to situation. Mood is the emotions that you (the reader) feel while you are reading. Some literature makes you feel sad, others joyful, still others, angry. The main purpose for some poems is to set a mood. Writers use many devices to create mood, including images, dialogue, setting, and plot. Often a writer creates a mood at the beginning of the story and continues it to the end. However, sometimes the mood changes because of the plot or changes in characters.
Types of sentences used in Landlady mostly are simple and compound sentences
Example: Billy was seventeen years old. He was wearing a new navy blue overcoat, a new brown trilby hat, and a new brown suit, and he was feeling fine.
Point of view: The short story Landlady uses third person limited point of view. This use is to hide the intention of the landlady character which is to kill Billy Weaver character. For comparison, if the author uses the first person point of view so that the intention will reveal since the beginning of the story. Organization of the text: Narrative style is used in the short story Landlady.
Tone of landlady
Some tones that are in the short story Landlady are as the following: ? “…nine o’clock in the evening and the moon was coming up out of a clear starry sky. But the air was deadly cold and the wind was like a flat blade of ice on his cheeks. ” shows a sinister tone. ? “even in the darkness, he could see that the paint was peeling from the woodwork on their doors and windows, and that the handsome white facades were cracked and blotchy from neglect.
Everything is always ready day and night in this house just on the off? chance that an acceptable young gentleman will come along. And it is such a pleasure, my dear, such a very great pleasure when now and again I open the door and I see someone standing there who is just exactly right. ” She was half? way up the stairs, and she paused with one hand on the stair? rail, turning her head and smiling down at him with pale lips. “Like you,” she added, and her blue eyes travelled slowly all the way down the length of Billy’s body, to his feet, and then up again.
- “Well, you see both of these names, Mulholland and Temple, I not only seem to remember each one of them separately, so to speak, but somehow or other, in some peculiar way, they both appear to be sort of connected together as well. As though they were both famous for the same sort of thing, if you see what I mean ? like . . . well . . . like Dempsey and Tunney, for example, or Churchill and Roosevelt. ” “How amusing,” she said.
- Now and again, he caught a whiff of a peculiar smell that seemed to emanate directly from her person. It was not in the least unpleasant, and it reminded him? ell, he wasn’t quite sure what it reminded him of. Pickled walnuts? New leather? Or was it the corridors of a hospital? Here are some parts of the story that lead us to feel surprising:
- “But my dear boy, he never left. He’s still here. Mr Temple is also here. They’re on the third floor, both of them together. ”
- “Excuse my asking, but haven’t there been any other guests here accept them in the last two or three years? ” “No, my dear,” she said.
