Mood Mood is the atmosphere or feeling that a literary work conveys to readers. All of the elements of a story contribute to the mood of a story. Mood is created through: – Setting – Characters’ actions – Images, descriptions – Word choice

Passage 1 “The policeman on the beat moved up the avenue impressively, The impressiveness was habitual and not for show, for spectators were few. The time was barely ten o’clock at night, but chilly gusts of wind with a taste of rain in them had well nigh de-peopled the streets.” (157)

(1) What is the mood in this passage? 1.Gloomy 2.Fearful 3.Sorrowful 4.Jubilant

Passage 2 “Hand in hand they stole down the long corridors…and sped down to the little ship which was moored beside the wharf. There were urgent explanations in whispers, and then sailors scrambled over one another to hoist the sail. Very quietly they cast off, and shipped oars as soon as they dared. Then they fled for their lives as the sky grew pale with the first light before dawn.” (808)

(2) What is the mood in this passage? 1.Confused 2.Somber 3.Tense 4.Collected

(3) What is the mood in this passage? “After school was over, the same four boys and I would set out together across the village green and through the village itself. On the way to school and on the way back we always passed the sweet-shop…We lingered outside its rather small window, gazing in at the big glass jars full of bull’s-eyes and old fashioned humbugs and strawberry bonbons and glacier mints and acid drops and lemon drops and all the rest of them…we would all troop in together and buy a pennyworth of this or that.” (536)

Passage 3 1.Empty 2.Cheerful 3.Suspenseful 4.Peaceful

(4) What is the mood in this passage? “ But how do they turn rats into licorice?” the young Thwaites had asked his father. “They wait until they’ve got ten-thousand rats,” the father had answered, “then they dump them all into a huge, shiny steel cauldron and boil them up for several hours. Two men stir the bubbling cauldron with long poles, and in the end they have a thick, steaming rat stew. After that, a cruncher is lowered into the cauldron to crunch the bones, and what’s left is a pulpy substance called rat mash.” (537)

Passage 4 1.Guilty 2.Terrifying 3.Humorous 4.Uncertain

The setting is rarely important in creating the mood. 1.True 2.False

Foreshadowing is when the author… 1.Covers the setting with many shadows 2.Gives us insight into the personality of a character 3.Hints at what will happen later in the story 4.Includes words that imitate sounds

by Pablo Picasso, 1903

An abstract painting by Wassily Kandinsky

A painting by Andrew Wyeth