Sherman Alexie Mood

Setting the mood for a tragic event is important to evoke emotion among the reader of a book. That is exactly what Sherman Alexie did in this excerpt in The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian, where a tragic event has occurred. Alexie uses tone, syntax, and structure to develop the mood if the passage.
Alexie sets the mood of the excerpt through his use of tone. For instance, he wrote, “At the hospital, my mother wept and wailed.” Usage of the words “wept” and “wailed” establish a distressful tone. In addition, he included, “I think it hurts the same as if you were only five years old, you know?” Here, he makes a connection to the sensitivity of a five-year-old and pain by using a melancholy tone. Alexie’s overall grim tone effectively sets the mood of the passage, as it is meant to be perceived as depressive and heartbreaking.
In addition to tone, Alexie’s syntax helps set the mood of the excerpt. In fact,
More specifically, Alexie does this by suddenly and drastically shifting the context of the excerpt. For instance, he went from “Everybody loved [my grandmother]; she loved everybody” straight to “In fact, last week, she was walking back home from a mini powwow at the Spokane Tribal Community Center, when she was struck and killed by a drunk driver.” Here, the mood drastically changes. It went from a clam, loving account of grandmother Spirit to a very shocking and heartbreaking revelation in a matter of seconds worth of reading. This effectively sets the tone, as the reader is stripped away of the peaceful mood and it forced into a very melancholy one.
In sum, Sherman Alexie sets a dark, depressing mood in this excerpt to introduce a tragic event. By using words associated with grief, by being blunt, and by creating a dramatic shift in events, he is able to provoke a feeling of gloominess in this part of the book. A tragic event calls for a tragic mood to go along with