Yusupov Oybek Nematjonovich Ahmedova Nigora Shavkatovna

Atmosphere
is the general mood of a literary work. It is affected by such 
strands of a literary work as the plot, setting, characters, details, symbols, and 
language means. Thus, in 
The Oval Portrait 
E. A. Poe sets the story in a remote 
turret of an abandoned castle. The main event takes place at midnight. The oval 

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portrait is in a niche and «in deep shade». All these details; the language and the 
fantastic history of the portrait create the mysterious atmosphere (or mood) of the 
tale. 
The 
author's attitude 
is his view of the characters and actions. It reflects his 
judgement of them. The author's attitude establishes the moral standards according 
to which the reader is to make his judgements about the problems raised in the 
story. The reader is expected to share the author's attitude. 
The attitude of a writer to his subject matter determines the tone of the story. 
The 
tone
is the light in which the characters and events are depicted. The tone, 
therefore, is closely related to atmosphere and attitude. 
Tone in oral speech is a component of intonation and is one of the prosodic 
means of expressing the speaker's attitude to the subject matter (i.e. to what is being 
said) and to his interlocutor (i.e. to whom it is said). Tone is so important in oral 
communication that it can overrule the sense of the grammatical structure of an 
utterance or the lexical meanings of words. Thus “You like it?” pronounced with a 
rising tone is taken for a question though the word-order, i. e. the grammatical 
structure is that of a statement. 
“Yes” 
with a falling tone means “It is so”. “Yes” 
pronounced with a falling-rising tone signifies “It may be so”. In fiction there are 
two aspects of tone, too. 
Tone expresses the relationship between the author (or narrator) and the 
subject matter. Hence it may be sympathetic, or impassive, cheerful or serious, 
vigorous or matter-of-fact, humorous or melancholy and so on. On the other hand, 
tone expresses the relationship between the author (or narrator) and the reader. 
Hence the tone may be familiar or official. There are scales of
 
variations of tone. 
Thus, the tone may be casual, familiar, impolite, defiant, offensive; it may be 
sarcastic, ironical, sneering or bitter. 
Tone in oral speech is primarily conveyed by modulations of the voice pitch, 
whereas in written speech the tone is mainly conveyed verbally, primarily by 

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emotionally colored words. For example, the indices of the somber and gloomy tone 
in 
The Oval Portrait 
are such words as “gloom”, “deep midnight”, “deep shadow”, 
“dreamy stupor”, “vague yet deep shadow”, “vague and quaint words”, etc. 
The tone in the fantastic history of the oval portrait is lyrical and dramatic. Its 
indices are as follows: 
(a) emotionally colored words, such as “glee”, “cherishing”, “pined”, 
“dreading”, “passionate”, “austere”, “ardor”, “entranced”, “aghast”; 
(b) an extensive use of imagery created by similes (“frolicsome as the young 
fawn”, “the spirit ... flickered up as the flame within the socket of the lamp”); 
epithets (“rarest beauty”, “lone turret”, “fervid and burning pleasure”, “mighty 
marvel”; metaphors (“the light dripped”, “withered the health and spirits of the 
bride”, “lost in reveries”); 
(c) poetic words, such as “wrought”, “took glory in his work”, “beheld”; 
(d) poetic structures, such as “wrought day and night to depict her, who so 
loved him”, “there were admitted none into the turret”, “were drawn from the cheeks 
of her, who sat ...”, “but little remained to do”; 
(e) intensifies, as in “the light which fell so ghastly”, “to depict her who so 
loved him”, “so surpassingly well”, “very pallid”, “on and still on”; 
(f) polysyndeton, as in “And he was a passionate, and wild, and moody man”, 
“he grew tremulous and very pallid, and aghast, and crying ...”. 
The fantastic history is remarkably rhythmical due to the numerous parallel 
constructions (“loving and cherishing all things, hating only ..., dreading only ...”), 
anaphora (“But she was humble ... But he ...”), doublets (“all light arid smiles”, 
“humble and obedient”, “from hour to hour”, “from day to day”), triplets (“she saw, 
and loved, and wedded the painter”, “he, passionate, studious, austere”, “pallet and 
brushes and other toward instruments”, “passionate, and wild, and moody”), 
alliteration of sonorants (“all light and smiles, and frolicsome as the young fawn, 
loving”, “yet she smiled on, and still on uncomplainingly”). The syntax and the 

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subtle choice of vocabulary seem to obey a strict orderly arrangement which results 
in brilliant rhythm, a lyrical and dramatic tone, a style which is characteristic of 
“poetic prose” i.е. an elaborately constructed prose with devices of poetry.
The interaction of rhythm, style and tone generally establishes and maintains a 
mood, or an atmosphere. In 
The Oval Portrait 
this interaction sets the events in a 
distant time and a mysterious place, tunes the reader to romantic descriptions and 
arouses fantastic expectations. 
Tone-shifts often occur in fiction and may accompany not only a change in the 
subject, but also a change in the narrative method or in the style. In 
The Oval 
Portrait 
tone-shifts accompany the changes in both the narrative method and style 
(the first part of the tale is a first-person narration with stylistic features typical of 
emotive prose, whereas the second part is a third-person narration written in the 
conventional style of English folk tales). 
Thus the main indices of tone in fiction are the author's choice of words and 
structures, stylistic devices and setting. However, those signals are not sufficient 
when detecting humor or irony, which are generally an obstacle for non-native 
readers. That is why humor and irony require special attention. 
Humor
is a device used in fiction and intended to cause laughter. The object 
of humor may be a funny incident or an odd feature of human character. The essence 
of humor is generally warmth, sympathy, fellow feeling. Schiller compared it with 
“the playful teasing fondness of a mother to her child”. Humor requires wit and 
sensibility on the part of the humorist. Addison gives humor its genealogy. He says 
that Truth was the founder of the family, and father of Good Sense. His son was Wit 
who married Mirth, and Humor was their child. 
A humorous tone is created by an apt usage of deliberate exaggerations (or 
hyperbole), a round-about way of naming things (or periphrasis), unexpected 
comparison (or simile), jargonisms, dialectal words, words whiсh sound amusing in 
the particular situation because they do not belong in it. The usage of these means 

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often produces humorous effect and testifies to the inventiveness and wit of the 
author. For example, in O’Henry’s story 
The Cop and the Anthem 
humor is attained 
by unexpected occurrence of foreign and learned words in very homely situations: 
“It seemed that his route to the coveted Island was not to be an epicurean one. Some 
other way of entering limbo must be thought of”. Or again, “The persecuted young 
woman had but to beckon a finger and Soapy would be practically en route for his 
insular haven”. Unexpected combinations of words, such as “insular haven” or “He 
seemed doomed to liberty” also contribute to the humorous effect.
But humor may be achieved even when the tone is not humorous. Some 
writers like M. Twain, St. Leacock often develop humor using a mock -serious tone, 
maintaining all the while a perfectly “straight face”. In such cases humor is 
developed through situation and character. Humor may be attained by a funny 
incident when a character finds himself in an amusing or ridiculous situation, or by a 
comical personage who says or does absurd things. Humor may be achieved by 
unexpected turns of events which catch the reader off guard, amazing and amusing 
him. 
The sense of humor both on the part of the writer and that of the reader 
depends on the nature of the mind and awareness of national cultural specifications. 
That makes it difficult to detect humor in foreign literature. 
The following diagram summarizes the indices of humor.