Tone and Mood

Tone is the speaker's attitude and mood is the feeling the poem leaves in the reader. In "Dockery and Son" the tone moves from awkward courtesy and dry irony through weary flatness and uneasy self-questioning to stark resignation, while the mood grows steadily more sombre.

The tone of "Dockery and Son" is dry, ironic and honest, and it changes from stanza to stanza. Stanza 1 is formal and awkward, stanza 2 clipped and bitter, stanza 3 weary and deadpan, stanza 4 uneasy and self-questioning, stanza 5 argumentative with a hint of defensiveness, and stanza 6 stark and resigned. Word choice, sentence length, punctuation, line length and imagery produce each change, and the self-correction at line 32 marks the biggest shift. The mood is melancholy and uneasy at the start and grows into bleakness and dread, ending in a cold acceptance that offers no consolation.

Tone and mood: the difference. Tone is the speaker's attitude, towards his subject, towards himself and towards the reader. It is heard in word choice, sentence shape and rhythm. Mood is the feeling or atmosphere that the poem creates in the reader. A speaker can have a wry tone while the mood of the poem is sad. In "Dockery and Son" the tone changes from stanza to stanza, while the mood stays sombre and grows darker.

The overall impression. The tone is dry, ironic and reflective, a kind of uneasy honesty. The speaker does not complain loudly and he does not boast. He says things plainly, notices the awkwardness of his own position, corrects himself, and in the end states a bleak conclusion without drama. The mood is melancholy and uneasy, moving towards dread and resignation.

Stanza 1: awkward courtesy and dry irony. The Dean's speech is polite, and the speaker answers only with a nod. His description of himself in line 3 as a visitor in a dark, mourning-like outfit shows an ironic awareness of how he must look among the young. The tone is formal, reserved and a little amused at his own expense. The mood is one of awkwardness and a faint chill, since death has already entered the picture through his clothes.

Stanza 2: clipped bitterness. A single blunt word reports the locked door (line 9), and the full stops in lines 9 and 10 give the sentences a brisk, unsentimental sound. The remark that he leaves unnoticed adds a dry bitterness. When he turns to Dockery's age, the tone is more puzzled than angry. The mood is one of exclusion, and he has the faint ghostliness of a man whom nobody sees.

Stanza 3: weary flatness. The sentences loosen. The speaker yawns, falls asleep and waits at a junction, and Cartwright's death is mentioned without any emphasis (lines 17 and 18). The tone is deadpan: flat and tired, with a seriousness hidden beneath it. The mood is numbness and drift, the dull hush of a long journey.

Stanza 4: uneasy self-questioning. The list of what he lacks (lines 25 and 26) is spoken plainly, but the thought of Dockery unsettles him, and the interruption of line 32 shows him catching himself out. The tone is honest and tentative: he is thinking aloud and not posing. The mood is disquiet.

Stanza 5: argument edged with irony. The exclamation of line 33 expresses amazement at Dockery's certainty, and the questions of lines 34 and 36 are sharp and probing. The speaker sounds like a man arguing with himself, and his claim that a child would have been a dilution carries a hint of defensiveness. The language turns abstract. The mood is puzzlement turning into something colder.

Stanza 6: stark resignation. The sentences shorten and harden (full stops in lines 44, 45 and 48), the pronouns widen to we and us, and the statement that life has two stages, boredom and fear, is delivered flatly, with no appeal for pity. The tone is that of a verdict: calm, fatalistic and without consolation. The mood is bleakness and dread, settling at last into a quiet, cold acceptance.

How the tone is made.

• Diction. Plain, conversational words and everyday details give the poem its dry, honest voice. The formal word for a visitor in line 3 and the compound word for his dark dress add a touch of gloomy humour. The words of stanza 5 are more abstract, and the words of line 45 are blunt, almost all of one syllable.
• Syntax and punctuation. Short, end-stopped sentences in stanza 2 are brisk, long winding sentences in stanzas 4 and 5 are probing, and the short firm sentences of stanza 6 are final.
• Rhythm and line length. Lines run on across line and stanza breaks until the short line 45 halts the flow.
• Imagery. The bright lawn is set against the dark clothes and the locked door, and the clouds of sand are cold and heavy.
• Structure. The self-correction at line 32 changes the poem from comparison to questioning.
• Irony and understatement. A death is mentioned in passing, and the speaker describes himself half comically. The understatement makes the sombre moments hit harder.
• Direct speech. The polite exchange of stanza 1 sets a social tone against which the speaker's private thoughts sound sharper.

The speaker's attitudes. Towards Dockery he is at first puzzled, as the arithmetic of lines 13 to 16 shows. He is then amazed (line 33), and finally he includes Dockery in a shared human condition by saying we and us. Towards himself he is self-mocking in stanza 1, defensive in stanza 5 and honest at the end. Towards life he is bleak.

Words for describing tone. Wry, dry, detached, awkward, brisk, bitter, weary, deadpan, uneasy, self-questioning, argumentative, ironic, defensive, resigned, stark, fatalistic. Choose precise words and avoid a bare "sad", which tells the examiner very little.

Common misreadings.

• The tone is not simple self-pity. The speaker defends his own choice, and he ends by treating both lives as unchosen.
• It is not simple envy. He marvels at Dockery and questions his certainty.
• It is not anger. The bleakest statements are delivered calmly, which is part of their chill.

How to answer a question on tone. Name two or three tones, show where each occurs by line number, explain which words, sentence shapes or images produce it, and describe the shift. If you can, listen to a recording of Larkin reading one of his poems: his own delivery is often described as dry and understated, which helps you hear the tone.