Take a story's temperature by studying its tone. Is it hopeful? Cynical? Snarky? Playful?
Gloomy Yet Hopeful
You might be wondering how something can be gloomy and hopeful at the same time. Leave it to Shorty to be both. Most of the time, he's pretty melancholy, telling us things like, "I am a killer and I have been killed, too, over and over; I am constantly being born. I have lost more things than I have found; I have destroyed more things than I have built" (1.3). Did anyone else just get chills? The way Shorty talks makes it sound like there's no hope for him whatsoever. He's definitely got a dark and twisty tone.
But then there's this other side to him that tries to see the world as full of hope and possibilities. When he goes all glass-half-full on us, his tone changes, too. Check out what he says later in the novel: "We have power. We can heal. We can see the future—we can change it, even" (15.107). That's a big change from his comment about destroying, killing, and hurting everything around him, right? Here, he sounds like someone who is ready to take life by the horns, even if he can't control how fast the bull moves.
Every now and again, we get glimpses of a more optimistic guy who sees a bright future.