The tone of “The Three-Day Blow” is, on the whole, disaffected and melancholic. The narrator primarily shifts between describing the scenes in simple language and moving closer to the perspective of Nick, who is sad that his relationship with Marjorie has ended. The following passage captures the narrator’s alienated tone as Nick reflects on his break-up:
Nick said nothing. The liquor had all died out of him and left him alone. Bill wasn’t there. He wasn’t sitting in front of the fire or going fishing tomorrow with Bill and his dad or anything. He wasn’t drunk. It was all gone. All he knew was that he had once had Marjorie and that he had lost her.
The language is simple here—“Nick said nothing,” “It was all gone,” etc.—yet Nick is clearly in an extreme amount of pain. The minimalism of the language contributes to a depressive tone—clearly, Nick has not fully come to terms with the depth of his feelings about his loss.
The tone does move out of this alienated state a few times in the story. For example, there are some humorous tongue-in-cheek moments, like when a very drunk Nick spills apricots all over the floor and the narrator describes how, after picking them up, “He felt quite proud of himself. He had been thoroughly practical.” The narrator’s tone captures the absurdity of a drunk man feeling proud for being able to pick fruit off the floor, and it shows how important it is to Nick that he act as if he is not as inebriated as he is. This is part of Nick and Bill’s unspoken competition to prove their masculinity by showing how alcohol does not affect them.
