The Way We Feel

Throughout the day, most people experience a range of emotions. You may start out the day happy or grouchy, then react to what happens with delight or dismay. Depending on how your day goes, you may end it in a good or bad mood, and that mood may end up affecting the people around you. In this way, how we feel can actually change the way others feel!

While the word mood is most often used to describe the way an individual feels, mood can also apply to the emotional atmosphere of an entire room. For example, if you walk into a room full of people laughing, you might say that the mood of the room is "jovial" because most of the people there seem amused. If you walk into a room full of people shouting at each other, you might call the mood in that room "aggressive."

The place where the events of a story take place is called setting, and fortunately for writers, readers tend to associate particular places with specific moods. Most people would associate excitement or happiness with an amusement park, sadness with a funeral home, and fear with a haunted house. Authors rely on these associations when telling their stories. Mood as a literary term means the emotional atmosphere suggested by the story's setting.

Setting can be a place (like a house, a farm, or a museum), a location (like Nebraska, Africa, or New York City), or a time (like the future, during the Civil Rights Movement, or last week). Each aspect of a story’s setting helps readers imagine the world that the author is creating. And because readers tend to share associations related to mood and place, writers can use the story's setting to affect the reader's emotional response to the story.

Let's practice identifying the moods associated with particular settings. Take a look at the image on each slide below. First, identify the setting of each image. Then, take a moment to think about the mood most commonly associated with the setting.