comment on style / language

As each of these stories is told by a first-person narrative, language and tone, in addition to plot, are paramount in terms of distinguishing one from the other, and Johnson employs a wide variety of tones in order to achieve this end. For example, Cass, the speaker in "The Starlight in Idaho," uses a lot of slang terms, such as “alkies” and “torching out” in order to make the narrator more distinctive (68).