LeGuin & Marqez-->Tone

Every story you read has a specific tone which is extremely important. This is because tone is the feeling or mood you get when reading a story due to certain diction used. In the short story, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas,” by Ursula K. Le Guin, has a very interesting tone. In the beginning of the story the tone is very happy when she is describing Omelas. She uses words such as “sparkled” and “merry,” and compares it to a fairytale. The tone in the story then shifts when she speaks about an incidents occurring in Omelas. Such as when she speaks about the cellar under Omelas. In this cellar is where a poor child is almost being held hostage, is malnourished, and sometimes beaten for no reason at all. Many people go and visit this child. They go home in tears and feared of what they see. They know that this poor child has no freedom and never will and that they too have no freedom. LeGuin describes the town as beautiful when you look at it, but if you look a little deeper it is ugly due to the way they treat that child. In the short story, “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World,” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the tone is very disturbing in the beginning. Such as when he is describing how the children were playing with the dead man on the beach. The tone then changes because even though death is a sad thing the people describe the body as beautiful. The diction used throughout the story is actually delightful, which is shocking because they are talking about a dead body that was washed up ashore. Both of these stories have a very interesting tones that shift from one feeling and then to the next.