Take a story's temperature by studying its tone. Is it hopeful? Cynical? Snarky? Playful?
Straight Shooter With Feeling
We have two narrators—Howard and Tilly—but Tilly really sets the tone of the story. Howard does little more than introduce us to Tilly and wrap the whole thing up neatly at the end. The last thing Howard says before we time travel into Tilly's story is this:
I wondered how many layers you'd have to scrape away until you came to the time when these old people were young. If they ever were.
I wondered how quiet you'd have to be to hear the voices of those times. (1.51-52)
How quiet? Well, just quiet enough to listen to Tilly talk. Because once she does, she tells the story in a direct, yet emotive, manner. Consider this passage:
The minute Mama heard that the cotton states were seceding, she feared anew for Noah.
Then this month when Little Napoleon Beauregard fired on Fort Sumter in Charleston Bay, the whole sky darkened. Another week and Lincoln had proclaimed his blockade of the Southern ports. Now he was calling for seventy-five thousand volunteers to fight. (3.8-9)
Tilly is keenly observant—she picks up on her mother's feelings and what triggers them—but she's also relaying facts in an accessible and digestible way. She recounts plainly and clearly what happens, particularly when it comes to the progression of the war. And yet, there's a bit of poetry tucked in here; when she says that "the whole sky darkened," she's speaking in metaphor, conveying a whole lot of feeling (namely, terror and death) amid this recounting of so much fact.