How A Kitten Ate My Partner's Depression Tone Analysis

Tone
The expression of the author’s attitude towards the piece of writing’s subject (and/or the audience) is called tone. Through different words and expressions, an author can convey a different tone towards the readers to express what the author wants them to feel. Different aspects can affect which type of tone an author chooses. They must know the purpose of what they are writing (what message they want to get across to the people reading) and who their audience is going to be (what the author wants them to take away from what they are going to read). In The New York Times article “How a Kitten Eased My Partner’s Depression” by Hannah Louise Poston, the author uses the tone of the first part of the writing as a juxtaposition for the final and overall tone of the article to accentuate her strong feelings towards the cat that helped her husband stray away from depression.
In the beginning of Hannah’s article, she has a very depressing and gloomy tone to her writing. When speaking of her husband Joe’s depression, she would use terms like; “fog”, “burning”, “zombie-like”, and even the phrase “...tumble into the gray sinkhole...”. She establishes a sense of unhappiness in the reader, her tone expressing the

horrible life they were living when Joe had this terrible feeling of dejection. Even when she tried to be optimistic about the situation (for example carrying on in a cheery manner), she would ultimately end in pessimistic thoughts, such as when she mentions and worries over the “3-Year Glitch” (a modern version of the 7-Year Itch, when many marriages fail). Eventually, Hannah can no longer withstand the dispiriting atmosphere (both at home and with the words in her article), and changes her tone.
Acting almost like a transitional tone between the two major ones, the author starts to write with more of an independent perspective.

Instead of gloomily trying to help her husband and failing, Hannah decides to make choices to benefit herself. Her self-reliance tone starts when she states, “I started buying my own favorite flavor of ice cream instead of his.” and “...I did it secretly, rebellious and entirely for my own inarticulate reasons.” Versus the sense of melancholy and almost regretful tone for attempting to help before, this time the author’s attitude is pleased to be doing something for herself. She no longer tries to tend to her husband’s seemingly helplessness state of being, and now autonomously chooses to get what she feels she needs: a

cat.
After a brief paragraph of anticipation and worry, the spotlight tone of the article comes into play. The very first moment the kitten and Joe lock eyes, feelings of love, joy, and new-found happiness practically leap off the page. Words like “energy”, “changes”, “amazing”, “happily”, and even the transition from calling Joe the author’s “partner” to her “lover”. Joe’s original zombie-like nature alters, and the kitten was now able to make him laugh and be jolly. The joyfulness is almost palpable, with gleeful expressions and words found throughout the remainder of the writing, greatly contrasting from the beginning of the article. Even when things seem to be sinking back into the negative, the author mentions how the new kitten brings them back together, claiming she is “the bridge over the sea between us”. Though the kitten, Sadie, can be standoffish and gruesome (refuses to be snuggled, and occasionally kills and eats things as precious and symbolic as birds) she is what contributed to the lessening of the sorrowful effects of Joe’s depression, and brought along with her the feeling of happiness back into the author’s life. The drastic change Sadie caused in their lives lead emotions of jolliness, as well as gratitude and appreciation from the couple.
Tone is used to convey a certain feeling to the readers, a feeling in which the author has towards what they are writing. The author of the article I analyzed, Hannah Louise Poston, communicated her intense fondness of the kitten she decided to get for ratting, which ushered in more delight then she could’ve ever imagined. This tone was brilliantly expressed through her writing, which could easily be interpreted by a general audience.