You may think that a setting's mood is determined entirely by its details, since readers tend to associate certain places with particular feelings. However, highly skilled authors using the same details can create very different moods. Watch this video to see how different authors use the image of a paper lantern to create very different moods in their stories.
Shedding Light on Mood
When writing is especially vivid and effective, it reaches out and changes our feelings and emotions. The settings authors use, the details they describe, and the senses they trigger all combine to create a powerful state of mind -- or mood-- in the reader.
Even something as simple as a paper lantern can create a strong sense of mood in the hands of a good writer.
How do these authors use the image of a paper lantern to affect the mood of their writing?
From the rear of the house within a lantern approached: a lantern that the trees sometimes striped and sometimes eclipsed, a paper lantern that had the form of a drum and a color of the moon.
From The Garden of Forking Paths - Jorge Luis Borges
Borges’ mood is dark and mysterious. The lantern seems to be floating by itself, and is sometimes hidden by trees and shadows.
A Vietnamese family is extended as far as the bloodline strings us together, like so many paper lanterns around a village square. And we all give off light together.
From A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain - Robert Olen Butler
Here, paper lanterns create a mood of togetherness and warmth. Butler compares the string of lanterns to a family, all glowing together and sharing their light.
Soft people... have got to be seductive -- put on soft colors, the colors of butterfly wings, and glow... The soft people have got to... put a paper lantern over the light.
From A Streetcar Named Desire - Tennessee Williams
The mood of this passage is hazy and secretive. Williams uses the image of a paper lantern to represent hiding your true personality from the world.
Question
What's different about each author's use of the lantern image? Why does each setting's mood turn out differently?
