Tone Dillard’s tone in the book develops from appreciative, to confused and dejected, and finally to reflective. This development of tone is appropriate for subject, audience, and argument/theme, and it also helps achieve the purpose. The tones in part I and II, especially in part II, resonate with the audiences. Indeed, it is not impossible to comprehend that many people have once wondered the meaning of the lives of moth, who unreservedly fly into the excruciating and deadly fire without any apparent purpose and contribution to the environment surrounding the fire, which makes it a question whether they are heroes who make the fire burn longer or pathetic creatures that lose their lives without being appreciated. Dillard, however, appreciates the moths’ sacrifice by underlining that their sacrifices sustain the fire longer and that such small creatures, at the bottom of the food chain, can have such colossal significance, which answers the readers’ question of the …show more content…
Thematically speaking, the hypophora underlines the theme of the book by describing some people’s failure of seeing the essence of God’s love but only the surface, like the fire of the candle that brings light to the world, and forget the source of the fire, which is the pain, the sufferings, and sacrifices that the Christ bears for the world. Even more pathetically, when the fire is out, when tragedies happen in people’s life and turn their life into darkness, the abandon their love for God and are irritated by their misperception that God has abandoned them and forsaken them. The answer of the hypophora, then, underlines the absurdity of such thoughts by emphasizing that the world still needs light but that light can not be deemed as guaranteed by God but requires sacrifices to perpetuate the light once granted by