If I learned anything from my high school English
classes, it is to read between the lines. There are countless
implications that writers hide in their work, and it is the reader’s job to
recognize them. I and all of my classmates have had lesson after lesson
concerning rhetorical devices engraved into our minds in order to make us
understand a piece of literature for all that it is worth.
One of the most helpful and crucial devices of all is
tone. If one does not understand the tone of a piece, how is he or she
supposed to know what it truly means? There are countless components that
make up tone, from diction to details in the work, such as the weather. For
example, if an author were to describe a setting as “ominous and bleak,” the
reader would associate this setting with a negative connotation. The
vocabulary causes the reader to make an impression about the scene.
As I stated previously, the same goes for matters such as
the weather. Foster uses the renowned introduction, “It was a dark and
stormy night" to establish the importance of the weather in literature.
Describing this kind of weather condition provides a nearly identical meaning
as describing a scene as ominous and bleak. A dark and stormy night changes the
tone of a piece from neutral to gloomy.
Furthermore, weather can provide a symbolic implication,
whether it is rain to mourn a death at a funeral or a sunny blue sky to
celebrate a perfect day. It can even contribute to the overall theme of the
piece, or it can completely change the mood and circumstances for the
characters in the work of literature. For instance, countless women can attest
to the famous scene in the novel/movie The
Notebook in which a torrential downpour adds to the tension of a situation,
and without the rain, following events would not have played out in the same
way or order.
There is also the cloud of mysterious fog which always
seems to follow villains around, as well as the glimmer of sunlight after the
hero defeats this very villain. There are many aspects of literature, weather
included, which require reading between the lines, and these details are what
make works of literature mean more than mere words on a page.
Weather is quite important to a story, and though it does not symbolize something 100% of the time, quite often, it does. "A dark and stormy night" is a clichéd weather description that every reader knows to mean a gloomy setting and foreboding mood to the scene. It does seem as if pouring rain always pops up, in movies, books, TV shows, anything, when the mood is declining and tension or sadness is setting in. "The Notebook" is a prime example of such tension, and the symbolic and actual parts the rain played in the story.
ReplyDeleteYES Sara, we have been trained all of our lives to examine a story and to pick it apart until we understand its worth. What I have always wondered is…why? In some cases does it benefit a reader to know all symbolic pieces the author put into the novel? Do symbols always hold an impactful “aha moment” for everyone? Is it not the discovery, the pondering thought, and the life connect that makes a hidden pieces in a text truly beautiful? For sometimes I think different bread crumbs were left throughout a story for different people. While is it nice knowing all the author put into a story, my favorite symbols and ideas are the ones that I run across myself.
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ReplyDeleteI completely agree! What I think is so interesting about weather’s relation to tone is that it can mean so many things. While something that is “ominous and bleak” is almost certainly a negative thing, Foster points out that rain and snow can be extremely versatile. With rain sometimes cleansing and sometimes tarnishing, and snow sometimes bringing life and sometimes bringing about death. This makes weather a really useful literary tool because it forces the reader to think more intently about the text whereas straightforward description does not leave much room to manoeuvre. And this also brings us back to Foster’s discussion of ambiguity in a text.
ReplyDeleteRelating tone to weather is a relationship that is significant in the aspect of addressing the extraction of pieces that we are taught to do while reading. This alone gives you a prime example of how important tone is in a work. Chosen words combined with other chosen words can lead to a plethora of interpretations that the reader is left to choose from. As Will addressed in his comment above, the symbols of weather cause readers to convey a certain tone. After realizing this, this leaves me with a bittersweet feeling towards this writing method, because I feel as if there are simple things that I myself have looked over while reading that could have been extremely significant in a work.
ReplyDeleteEven after being molded into piece pickers of texts, there still seem to be gaps that rise as I touch base with different works, assignments, and leisure reads.