An Analysis Of James Joyce's The Greatest Gift And Araby

According to Edgar V. Robert’s (b.1928), in his twelfth chapter from Writing about Literature titled “Writing about Tone: The Writer’s Control over Attitudes and Feelings” (1961) the theory of tone refers to the methods by which writers and speakers reveal attitudes or feelings. In both the short stories “The Greatest Gift” (1943), by author Philip Van Doren Stern (1900-1984) and “Araby” (1914), by author James Joyce (1882-1941) the tone is shown by the attitudes the authors set through the protagonist of each story. The authors of both of these short stories use tone to provide a better understanding of what they wanted us, as readers, to feel while reading. Since Robert’s described the theory of tone as referring to the attitudes or feelings

Expressing the tone, Van Doren Stern uses the attitude of the protagonist to provide a deeper meaning to the story. Using the attitude of the protagonist, we can visualize the atmosphere being described in the writing. Such as at the beginning of “The Greatest Gift,” the author sets the tone as despair as we see the protagonist, George Pratt, contemplate suicide. “The water looked paralyzingly cold. George wondered how long a man could stay alive in it” (Van Doren Stern 1). Despair is understood to be the tone because as the reader we feel with the attitude being set that George’s life is a mess at the time and that he has no other way out then to end his

In Van Doren Stern’s short story we see the tone set as being happiness when George is brought back into the life of him being born again, and everything going back to the way it was before. Except now, George knows what it would be like without him there and would never ponder suicide or wish to never be born ever again. “He grasped his startled brother’s hand and wrung it frantically, wishing him an almost hysterical Merry Christmas. Then he dashed across the parlor to examine a certain photograph. He kissed his mother, joked with his father… His wife came toward him… “I thought I’d lost you. Oh, Mary, I thought I’d lost you!” (Van Doren Stern