As a literary device, mood refers to the emotional response that a writer wishes to evoke in readers through a story. This response can range anywhere from feelings of calm, fear, anger or joy depending on the literary work. In general, short stories and poems feature a consistent mood due to their length. Novels can feature more than one mood, although readers will typically identify an overall emotional response to the work as a whole. Mood allows a writer to create a memorable and meaningful story with which the reader can connect. In addition, writers reveal their artistic use of language and creative skills when establishing the mood of a literary work.

For example, in her novel about the relationship between mothers and daughters, Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club utilizes mood as a literary device to evoke emotions in the reader as a parallel for the way the mother characters attempt to emotionally connect with their daughters.

“It’s not that we had no heart or eyes for pain. We were all afraid. We all had our miseries. But to despair was to wish for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable…What was worse, to sit and wait for our own deaths with proper somber faces? Or to choose our own happiness?”

In this passage, though the subject matter centers around pain, despair and loss, the mood of the narrative is hopeful. Tan intentionally establishes this mood to evoke hope in the readers in the same way that the mothers in the novel wish to inspire and evoke hope in their daughters.