Begin practicing the analysis of tone by using short passages that use a specific device such as Diction, Images, Details, Language or Sentence Structure to convey tone. Suggest what tone words you would use to describe the speaker's attitude.

1.      In his "The Fall of the House of Usher," Edgar Allan Poe has created clear tone. Identify the tone, then examine and provide examples of diction, details, imagery, and syntax that create the tone

During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country, and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher...I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled luster by the dwelling...(with) vacant and eye-like windows.

Edgar Allan Poe From "The Fall of the House of Usher."

1. Color code the literary devices in the paragraph by using the following key:

red = diction

blue =details

purple =imagery

2. Choose three to five examples of each literary device listed above and explain connotation, and the effect of the literary device on the tone.

Diction such as " oppressively," "dreary," "precipitous," and "vacant" offers the connotation that the place the man is in is a only, dark, boring place. These examples help reinforce the tone because they show what the man is thinking about the place.

Details such as  “dull, dark, and soundless day,” “clouds hung,” “low in the heavens,” “shades of the evening,” and “black and lurid tarn” offers the connotation the placed is a wasteland and abandoned. These examples help reinforce the tone because when it says the clouds hung it makes it seem that the clouds don’t want to be there but they have to be. Also the detail of a dull, dark, and soundless day shows that this day doesn’t have that much importance.

Images such as “passing alone,” “melancholy House of Usher,” “unruffled luster by the dwelling,” “eye-like windows,” and  “tract of country” all give the image that the area is quite and isolated. It is an area of a place that is less traveled.