The tone of “The Fisherman and His Soul” vacillates between empathetic and cavalier. While Wilde (via the narrator) often earnestly shows empathy for his characters—capturing their suffering and joys alike in rich language—there are also moments in which this more emotional tone disappears. Take the following passage, for example, which comes after the Soul has successfully tempted the Fisherman to commit cruel acts against innocent people:
So they entered in and passed through the streets, and as they passed through the Street of the Sellers of Sandals, the young Fisherman saw a child standing by a jar of water. And his Soul said to him, “Smite that child.” So he smote the child till it wept, and when he had done this they went hurriedly out of the city.
Despite the fact that the Fisherman beats an innocent child “till it wept,” the narrator’s tone is extremely cavalier here. They do not show any empathy for the child or signal that they are aware of the immorality of this behavior. Instead, they simply state that the Fisherman beat the child and that “when he had done this they went hurriedly out of the city.”
Compare the tone of that passage with the tone of the following, which comes at the end of the story (after the Priest’s insight that love is all that matters):
[I]n the morning, while it was still dawn, he went forth with the monks and the musicians, and the candle-bearers and the swingers of censers, and a great company, and came to the shore of the sea, and blessed the sea, and all the wild things that are in it.
The narrator’s tone here is much more attuned to the emotions of those in the scene, as evidenced by their meditative descriptions of all the people headed down to the sea together in order to “bless the sea, and all the wild things that are in it.” It is notable that, when Wilde’s characters are out of touch with their emotions, the narrator is as well, and when they are emotionally present, the narrator’s tone communicates this, too.
