Use the Right Tone When Expressing Attitude

Today we received a novel titled Ready Player One, written by Ernest Cline. We are to read level one of this book by October 22nd. This book, unlike others is divided into levels as well as chapters. Level 1 is around 160 pages long meaning we would have to read about 10 pages every night to get that done by the deadline. Once we finish reading this novel, we are to answer two questions which are “What does the tone of this novel develop about the past and future”.  After we received these directions, we began to talk about the tone of books and films. The tone can be expressed in many different ways to show the attitude intended by the author or director. These tones can be mostly positive or negative however they can be put into much more depth as well. We always can tell a tone of a book or when someone speaks because we do it everyday without even knowing that we are doing it. It is almost second nature to us now. Even though it is easier to tell someone’s tone while they are speaking, it can be difficult to tell in a book or a piece of literature. Also during class we re-watched a scene from No Country For Old Men where Anton is in the gas station mart and speaking to the cashier. In this scene, the tone was very tense as the man’s life depended on the coin flip that Anton made on the counter. Anton was very serious and the man was extremely scared and nervous. The audience watching this scene could feel very anxious as they do not know what is going to happen because Anton has already been pictured as a mass murderer so this man’s life was very much in jeopardy. Toward the end of the class period, Mr. Rivers showed us a 12 page document/PDF that is filled with tone words that we can use to our advantage when we are writing about tone. Along with these tone words are their definitions so we can distinguish them from a negative connotation and a positive connotation. I think those words and that document can be very useful this year in this class.