TONE WORDS IN QUOTES

1. Wistful: Full of melancholy longing or wishful yearning “She seemed wistful for the old days when I'd hung around her all the time.” (David Huddle). “They talked in loud, worried whispers while they cut off what was left of my fancy pink dress with a pair of shiny scissors.” (Walls, 10) Walls seems to feel wistful, recalling how the nurses had to cut off the charred remains of her favorite dress. This is manifested through her use of the phrase, “what was left of” as well as her use of the word “fancy”. “What was left” suggests her reluctance to let go of that dress, and “fancy” tells us why. In her life, she did not have a lot of “fancy” anything.

2. Facetious: joking or trying to be jocular, esp. at an inappropriate time “Thomas de Noronha and Antonio Serrao de Castro, the first a natural and facile writer, the second the author of Os Ratos da Inquisicao, a facetious poem composed during his incarceration in the dungeons of the Inquisition.” “Sailors and women with lots of makeup stayed there, too. Dad called it a flophouse, but Mom said it was an SRO, and when I asked what that stood for, she told me the hotel was for special residents only.” (Walls, 33) What is facetious in the tone Walls takes here is her strategic ignorance of the somewhat inappropriate location in which they are now living. The Tenderloin District still has a seedy reputation. The sailors are there to hook up with the “women with lots of makeup” (aka, prostitutes), and it is sort of funny how Walls reports on the definitions her parents give her— (flophouse and SRO—Single Room Occupancy)—because they are giving her the unvarnished adult explanations that she is reporting to her audience through the lens of a young child who thinks she is always on an “adventure” because this is what her parents tell her. As readers, we see past this, and can snicker a little about the facetiously stated “women with lots of makeup” subject.