MOOD PRESENTATION

mood

The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street

What will this lesson look like?

Success Criteria

Learning Intention

Language Objective

Students can explain how specific elements of the text contribute to the mood. Students can use specific examples from the text to support their analysis of mood.

To understand how mood is created in The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street through elements such as setting, dialogue, and character actions.

I will use academic language to describe and discuss mood in the text.

Do Now:

• What do you think creates mood in a story?
• Can you think of a time you felt a particular mood when reading a story?

Define

In literature, mood is the emotional quality or atmosphere of a story or poem. Mood is created by the author’s or poet’s use of specific words and descriptions. In particular, descriptions of the setting, or the time and place, often establish the mood of the literary work. For example: “The river sparkled in the golden sunshine as the water flowed around the bend.” In this sentence, the descriptive words and phrases sparkled and golden sunshine create a happy, peaceful mood. *Watch Concept definition video

Vocabulary

the time and place of the events in a work of literature

the emotional atmosphere of a piece of writing, created through diction, figurative language, and other choicest

setting

mood

Identification and Application:

• In order to identify language that contributes to the mood, note the following:
• word choice
• stage directions
• speech patterns

Analyze how the characters’ language contributes to the mood, using the following questions as a guide:

• What does this character feel?
• How do I know that?
• How does this make me feel?
• How can I use this information to interpret the mood of the text?

Model:

In “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street,” by Rod Serling, a neighborhood falls to paranoia when some electrical devices behave strangely. Analyzing the mood of a drama will help the reader to understand the setting and how the characters are feeling, to make connections to themes or messages in the text. Let’s look at how one reader analyzes mood in the text:

The stage direction says Steve chuckles, but the mood seems too tense to be funny. He must be trying to lighten the mood to keep the peace. But Goodman’s light going out tells me that this isn’t a joke. It seems to confirm the fears of the neighbors.

Model:

The reader wants to understand the text’s mood because he will be reading Steve’s lines aloud in class. He sees that a stage direction calls for the character Steve to chuckle. He knows that he should not read the line comically or give a genuine-sounding chuckle because he understands that it would not fit the tense mood of the text. Steve laughs to break the tension of the mood and convince the neighbors that the situation should not be taken seriously. The reader also notes that Goodman’s line and the following stage directions confirm that this is not a joking situation. The neighbors are afraid and the mood is tense. By analyzing the mood, the reader can understand character lines and setting better to connect to general themes of fear and paranoia in the text.

Model:

He continues to read “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” to analyze the mood in a later passage:

The figure appears mysteriously and is hard to see. The slow footsteps seem menacing to the other characters which increases the suspense of the scene. All of the neighbors’ paranoias and fears are coming to a head. The tense and scary mood of the scene seems to be rising.

Model:

The reader notes that the author uses suspenseful stage directions for this scene. The figure is unidentifiable and materializes before the neighbors, which adds to the mysterious and supernatural themes in the excerpt. The reader also notes that the slow footsteps seem menacing to the other characters, as though all of their fears are coming towards them at this point. The reader picks up that the mood is tense and scary, but that the tensions are rising even higher in this scene. By analyzing the mood of the whole excerpt, the reader can understand what the setting might be like and how characters are feeling in the scenes. Understanding the mood can also help the reader connect to the overall messages and themes of fear and paranoia in the text.