Literature Glossary
Don’t be an oxymoron. Know your literary terms.
Over 200 literary terms, Shmooped to perfection.
Mood
Definition:
You know how you set the mood for a party by turning down the lights and cranking up the Vengaboys? Writers do the same thing in literature.
Mood refers to the emotional atmosphere that a writer constructs in order to get a response from the audience. It can be whipped up through setting, tone, and diction, or a combination of all three.
For example, many of Edgar Allan Poe's stories and poems have a gloomy, dark, mysterious mood. Most Dr. Seuss books, on the other hand, have a whimsical, humorous mood (and nobody buried beneath the floorboards).