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What is the definition of mood?

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The mood of a piece of writing is the intended emotional response the work creates in the reader.

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In literature, the term "mood" has to do with the tone that the story or poem presents to the reader. A reader can find the mood of what s/he is reading through the descriptions that the author provides through imagery. Imagery uses sight, smell, touch, taste, and sound to give the reader more insight to the setting, plot or descriptions of characters in the work. This device can show sadness through the description of storm clouds or happiness through playful musical sounds of birds during a warm sunrise. How the author presents his/her perspective, or point of view, can also show attitude or opinions that help to create the mood as well.

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What is mood in literature?

An author crafts a piece of writing with several goals. One of those is to elicit a certain emotional response in you, the reader. This becomes the work's mood.

To accomplish this, the author makes many...

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stylistic choices. They may choose certain words, use certain sounds, employ specific literary devices, and structure the poem in creative ways. Taken together, those choices create certain feelings in you, the reader, as you process the work. This mood is central to the work's theme and overall message. The mood emerges over the totality of the work, so it's important not to get too caught up in a single sentence or paragraph when looking to identify the mood.

For an example of mood, consider the opening stanza of Edgar Allen Poe's "The Raven":

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
Only this and nothing more.”
The setting is dark, around midnight. Word choice includes dreary, weak, weary, forgotten, rapping, and only. The speaker has been interrupted by the unexpected. There is the repetition of hard sounds, such as the w in the first line, the k sound in the second line, and the n sound in the next line. This repetition of sounds (and even words) mimics the mysterious tapping at the door. Taken together, all these details contribute to an ominous or suspenseful mood.
By contrast, consider the mood of Emily Dickinson's "'Hope' is the thing with feathers":

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard

In this poem, the speaker uses the symbol of a bird to examine the idea of hope. She uses sharp line breaks to force the reader to process the meaning slowly, considering how the songs of hope can be heard most sweetly in the harsh storms of life. The sounds are full of soft vowels, and words such as feathers, perches, soul, sings, and sweetest invoke pleasant imagery. The mood of this poem is uplifting or thoughtful.

The mood of a work can often be described using various words as readers bring their own experiences to any piece of literature and may use slightly different words to describe that response. But generally speaking, the mood will be similar from reader to reader as all of the author's choices are taken in totality to construct the overall intended response.

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