Tone

Tone is a fairly important tool that poets and author’s utilize to convey emotion, setting, and meaning. Often times, tone emphasizes the word choice and meaning of the piece and is useful in this regard. For example, in Out Out by Robert Frost, Frost uses tone and tone shifts to shock the reader and to put the reader through a series of different emotions. Whilst Frost begins the poem with a lighthearted look at a family preparing dinner whilst a boy is out sawing wood. However, the tone of the poem radically shifts halfway through as the boy’s hand is cut off by the saw and eventually he dies. Without tone and tone shifts, the poem would be very static and the boy’s death would have no emotional weight on the reader. Consequently, tone is one of the most important characteristics for defining a work’s emotion and meaning. Tone is the trait the engages the reader in the work, and contains the emotion that play is trying to portray.