Julia Schwartz
English I
September 26, 2000
The Human Comedy by William Saroyan
Essay on tone of Chapter 37
While Chapter 37 of The Human Comedy by William Saroyan is brief, it is still a very meaningful chapter. In this chapter, two young Ithaca soldiers come home from the war. In the beginning of the chapter, the two boys are stepping off a train, marveling at their hometown. They then go home, where they are greeted with a frenzy of confusion of their mothers, families, and friends. The narrator’s versatile tone in this chapter is sometimes calm, sometimes excited, and often his words have a deeper meaning than they may seem to. However, the tone is always essential to conveying the joy of the families in seeing their boys home alive, and the boy’s own delight in being home again and away from the terrors of the war.
As Chapter 37 begins, two unknown soldiers step off a train. The narrator tells that this train is the “Santa Fe train from San Francisco” (180). These words in themselves sound similar, with the repetition of the ‘san’ sound and the ‘f’ sound. The ‘san’s are harder sounds, while the f’s are softer, almost whispery. These together create a gentle cadence almost like that of the train which they are telling about. Again the narrator creates this rolling sound like a railway when he speaks, “the first soldier looked at his friend and said…” (180) The consonance of the ‘d’ in almost every word in this sentence creates a rhythmic feel which imitates the train, much like the first sentence describing where the train was from.
Next, the first soldier tells his friend, “I don’t know how you feel, but this is how I
feel.” (180-181) The assonance of all the slow ‘o’ sounds, along with the two italicized words, create a very soothing feeling. The tone here relaxes the reader, almost creating a lull in the mood of the chapter and putting the reader into a sleepy mood.
Soon, the narrator’s tone changes. Instead of gentle, rolling sounds, the narrator uses the word “suddenly.” This is an abrupt change because the ‘u’ makes a heaving sound, like the reader is out of breath. Also, the double ‘d’s and the ‘ly’ are hard sounds, which further jolt the reader. It’s interesting how with one word, the narrator’s tone and the reader’s mood can change so completely. After ‘suddenly,’ the narrator continues with long sentences, like “…they began to run, one boy running up onto the porch of one house and the other up onto the porch of the house next door.” (181) Not only is this sentence long in length, it also feels long, because the two parts of it are almost repeating each other. Then, the narrator uses another pair of long sentences: “The women who opened the doors embraced the boys at the same time. And now men and boys and girls and women took turns embracing the soldiers” (181). Because the second sentence starts with the word ‘and,’ the two sentences seem almost as if they were one. And then the phrase “men and boys and girls and women” seems like more than seven words; because of the grouping of males, then children, then females, the phrase almost seems like it is a shortened version of ‘men and boys, boys and girls, girls and women.’ This clever grouping of the nouns makes the sentence seem longer, but the three ‘and’s give it a sense of exhilaration.
A common trend throughout the whole chapter is the repetition of the word ‘boy.’ In this chapter that is just over one page long, the word ‘boy’ is used thirteen times. Moreover, it is used eight times in one paragraph:
“Wrong boy,” he shouted, “wrong boy!” It’s Danny Booth, the neighbor’s boy! He’s
come home. He lives next door. Came to the wrong house. We thought it was our
boy. It’s Mrs. Booth’s boy. There’s our boy over there kissing Mrs. Booth. Wrong
boy, Ma, wrong boy!” (181)
It seems that by using the word ‘boy’ so much in this chapter, the narrator is trying to emphasize that these two soldiers aren’t men, but young boys, probably in their teens. The narrator wants us to feel the injustice of war, that because people can’t get along and resolve conflict, parents must send their children off to fight in a violent war before they even reach their twenties. Also, the brief sentences used in this passage serve to add to the excitement involved in welcoming the boys home. As the narrator describes one person’s frenzy over seeing his son, he has the man just doing one thing with his words: shouting. Then, as the man shouts in short, choppy sentences, ending with exclamation points, the reader can easily hear this man shouting at the top of his lungs.
The names in Chapter 37 also give away the mood of the chapter. The narrator repeats names such as Ithaca, Danny Booth, Mrs. Booth, Alf Rife, Harry Rife, and Mrs. Rife. It seems that the author wants the identities of the characters to seem as real as possible, so that the reader can understand that real people were involved in the war, and not just fictional characters. One name that seems particularly intriguing is the name Mrs. Rife. ‘Rife’ almost seems like ‘right,” and ‘Mrs.’ sounds just like ‘this is.’ Therefore, ‘Mrs. Rife’ changes to the phrase ‘this is right.’ Perhaps the narrator uses the name Mrs. Rife as a discreet way of saying that this is the way it should be, the young boys coming home to their mothers from the war.
The narrator concludes the chapter by describing a “happy delirium,” with people going all over hugging and welcoming the boys home. And no one can forget Alf Rife (which sounds like ‘all right’) continually shouting, “Wrong boy, wrong boy!” However, this time, Alf’s shouting seems less like confusion and more as if he is just so happy he can’t think of what to say. Alf Rife’s shouting continues until the end of the chapter, and he is shouting to everyone, and keeps saying ‘wrong.’ In this way, the narrator manages to back away from the joyful chaos of the Booth and Rife homes, like a scene in a movie that is focused on but then zoomed out of, showing a large area, with the original scene very tiny.
In conclusion, the tone that the narrator uses in Chapter 37 of The Human Comedy is essential to describing the moods and feelings of the characters in the chapter. The narrator also cleverly manipulates his words to create hidden messages about feelings, and consonance and assonance to make his words seem more like sounds. By creating smooth sounds then abrupt sounds, he easily implies the railroad then excited moods, which perfectly imitate a homecoming, as is happening in Chapter 37. Also, by repeatedly using the word ‘boy,’ Saroyan’s narrator beats it into the reader’s head that the soldiers are boys. Lastly, by little clever word tricks, the narrator’s tone implies many phrases, such as ‘all right,’ which add to the chapter something that perhaps might have otherwise had to have been explained, which would have been awkward. In these ways, the narrator of The Human Comedy uses tone and compilation of sounds to further convey his thoughts, ideas, and character’s actions. If the narrator did not use such a vivid and descriptive tone, Chapter 37 might have lacked a lot of it’s feeling and value on a sympathetic and personal level. By using varied tone, the narrator helps the reader to be more involved in the scene that occurs, and to see the characters and their actions as real. The narrator’s tone almost lets the reader jump into the book and trail the boys through their short trip home, instead of just reading about it. Thus, Chapter 37 of The Human Comedy by William Saroyan has a wonderful feeling, because the tone of the narrator relays all the happy and joyful emotions of the soldiers of being home again at last.