The Wonderful World of Tone!
Despair

Definition: A loss of hope

"Dear Mimmy,
      SLAUGHTER!  MASSACRE!  HORROR!  CRIME!  BLOOD!  SCREAMS!  TEARS!  DESPAIR!
     That's what Vaso Miskin Street looks like today.  Two shells exploded in the street and one in the market... It's unbelieveable.  I got a lump in my throat and a knot in my tummy.  HORRIBLE.  They are taking the wounded to the hospital.  We kept going to the window hoping to see Mommy, but she wasn't back... Daddy and I were tearing our hair out.  We didn't know what happened to her.  Was she alive? ... I looked out the window one more time and... I SAW MOMMY RUNNING ACROSS THE BRIDGE.  As she came into the house she started shaking and crying... Thank God, Mommy is with us.  Thank God.
     A HORRIBLE DAY.  UNFORGETTABLE.
     HORRIBLE!  HORRIBLE!
Your Zlata"
~Zlata's Diary, A Child's Life in Sarajevo
by Zlata Filipovic

     Even at first glance, the reader can sense the tone of despair from Zlata's diary entry.  Her use of bold and uppercase exclamations throughout the entry only give a glimpse of the fear and desolation she felt.  Her short and simple sentence structures create the voice needed to describe the horrors of Sarajevo from a child's eyewitness account.

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