Read the excerpt from Does My Head Look Big in This? by Randa Abdel-Fattah. I hate the fact that I had to leave Hidaya. But it o
nly goes up to tenth grade because it doesn't have enough funding to offer eleventh and twelfth grades. My best friends, Leila Okulgen and Yasmeen Khan, moved on to a public high school close to Coburg, where they live. I begged my parents to let me go with them but Mom and Dad insisted that I go to a private school. What is the narrator’s tone in this passage? A. nostalgic B. hopeful C. regretful D. excited
The correct answer is <em>C, regretful</em>. This is because the narrator is talking about the past and feels bad because she couldn't do anything to change it. In fact, she regrets that she couldn't attend to the same school that her best friends moved to.
Questions about tone (and mood as well) all depend on feelings. The best way to approach these questions is to think about whether or not it has a positive feeling or a negative feeling. In this passage the narrator says, " I hate the fact that I had to leave Hidaya." She also says, "I begged my parents..." Neither of these quotes shows that there is a positive feeling to this passage. She is not getting what she wants and because of this has to leave her friends. Any and all answers that have a positive connotation must be eliminated. Therefore, B and D are immediately not correct. Nostalgic also has a positive connotation so it should be eliminated as well. This only leaves regretful. We know that regretful is correct because of the line " I hate the fact that I had to leave Hidaya."
