Friday Night Lights, By H. G. Bissinger

608 Words2 Pages

The mood in a novel is the overall feeling, sense or atmosphere of a scene. To have such moods properly produced and portrayed to the reader by 3 writing techniques. In the excerpt from the novel, Friday Night Lights, the author, H. G. Bissinger personally puts to light Mike Winchell, the high school star quarterback on the day of the football game. Bissinger weaves into the excerpt setting, word choice, and imagery to provide the reader typically a sense of intensity and gloominess when reading these scenes. For starters, Bissenger is able to input settings to make an atmosphere depressing and lonely. That morning before Mike went to school, the “shabby”, “silent”, “darkness” setting. This gives them a sense of loneliness and is somewhat depressing. …show more content…

Furthermore, Pep rallies are typically generalized as exciting things. So when the text says “Once he got to school he was going to go to the pep-rally” it overall communicates that he was ambitious about attending the pep-rally. Except it wasn't actually what Bissenger had written instead, it was (paragraph 3) “Once he got to school he had to go to the pep rally,” This slight difference “had to” instead of “going to” is what completely shifts the reader's understanding of what the pep rally is. The one word difference of “had” associates the reader's understanding of Michael viewing it as a chore. On the other hand, more extreme word choices like similes, allusions and fancy words are placed after the first example is another good example of the off-putting feeling about the pep rally the reader experiences from Mike. This is where it is mentioned of how the balloons with his face on them had a (paragraph 3) “delicate sadness as haunting as Diane Arbus” This is a very different form of word choice with a simile and allusion, but it expresses a very specific type of emotion he gets when he sees the balloons which sets the whole scene in that paragraph to feel the same

Open Document