The Crossing Field
The passage from the Crossing is filled with complex and diverse diction to convey many tones towards the reader. The most predominate of the tones include the tones of wonder, misery, and hope. These tones especially reflect the narrator’s curiosity and thoughts towards the corpse of a deceased wolf. Much as how Hamlet found the skull of the fool he once knew, the narrator of this passage looks on in wonder as a wolf, once a skillful and tactile animal, lies dead at his feet. The passage’s diction reflects all aspects of the narrator’s curiosity and clearly expresses the tones of wonder, misery, and hope.
The tone of wonder and curiosity of the narrator and the passage is clearly evident throughout the entirety of this event. Towards the end of the passage the narrator proceeds to look onto the wolf’s corpse, prodding it and describing its qualities. The description of the cold lifeless teeth, the now bloodied forehead, and its open eyes. He described these qualities with intuition, closing the eyes as if he knew the wolf could see the mountains it once roamed. That he could describe the wolf running through the fields of grass, hunting and preying on deer. The sheer curiosity of the narrator truly is reflected by these thoughts, to wonder of the freedom and conjure eclectic scenes of the wolf when it was alive.
Misery is an obvious tone within this passage the darkness and lifeless corpse of the wolf give off a stench of the never ending of life and death. The narrator