Tone - Analysis, The Revolutionist | The Revolutionist- Summary, Themes & Characters - Novels PDF Download

Matter-of-fact

If you don't pay close attention, you might almost think that the story is narrated in the third-person because the narrator expresses almost no emotion or opinion about the comrade. Sure, he tells us that he's young, nice, and shy… but none of those tell us very much at all.

He sticks to the facts about the comrade's background, statements, and actions—for instance: "He was delighted with Italy. It was a beautiful country, he said […] He had been in many towns, walked much, and seen many pictures" (2)—and because of this sort of factual reporting, it's hard to get much sense of how the narrator actually feels about the comrade. The tone is neither positive nor negative; instead, this story unfolds with committed neutrality.

This means that the work of interpretation is really left up to the reader. Since the narrator doesn't give us many clues about what we should make of the comrade, we're left to try to read between the lines. For instance, when the narrator does not respond to the comrade's insistence that the revolution will start in Italy (7), does that mean he thinks the comrade is foolish? Naïve? Or is the narrator simply preoccupied with something else? The story's matter-of-fact tone leaves questions like these unanswered—and in doing so, practically makes the reader a third character.