Tips for Teaching Literary Analysis - Mood and The Horse and His Boy

Tips for Teaching Literary Analysis - Mood and The Horse and His Boy

As you study literary elements used by an author with the aid of a Narnia unit study, you'll begin to learn about mood. Mood is the feeling that a story gives the reader.

More specifically, the way a reader is affected or how he feels when he reads a story is called the mood. As the author of The Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis uses story elements -- the plot, characters, setting, and a certain choice of words -- to establish the mood which the reader is supposed to feel or experience. Some types of the moods that a reader might sense may be mysterious or joyous, uncertain or excited, humorous or serious.

To think about the mood in a story, we can ask ourselves:

1. How does this story make me feel?

2. How is the mood changing as the plot progresses?

For a short story, there may be only one mood. For a longer book, like The Horse and His Boy, the mood may change and vary throughout the story as the plot develops. As conflicts come and go via resolution, as characters are introduced (as mentioned in a Narnia unit study), and as settings change, the mood will of necessity change from happy to sad, suspenseful to resolved, or ecstatic to disappointed.

In reading and pondering The Horse and His Boy, consider then answer the two questions above from a Narnia unit study viewpoint. In terms of mood, you may want to make a timeline or a storyboard as you read, a way to chart the changes in the emotions you are feeling.

What major feeling is The Horse and His Boy giving you? How is the mood changing in this Chronicles of Narnia book?

As each major development in the plot to free Bree and Shasta, how does the mood change as they meet the characters, Aravis and her talking horse, Hwin? Doesn't the idea of escaping to Narnia during the reign of Peter, Susan, Edmund, and Lucy evoke a mood all its own? Write down your answers to these questions and you will be describing the mood.

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Melanie Hexter is the author of The Chronicles of Narnia unit study, a LEMILOE Publishing "Winning at Literature" comprehensive literature-based unit study that provides teachers and home school parents with a step-by-step guide for teaching literary analysis while exploring the wonders of Narnia. To learn more about this study, visit www.NarniaUnitStudy.com.

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