The Story of an Hour Essay The character of focus in the “ The Story of an Hour”, Louise Mallard, is described as a young, innocent women with a newly found inner-happiness and sense of freedom as a result of the death of her husband and the end of her demanding marriage. Kate Chopin uses symbolism and irony to develop the character of Louise Mallard throughout the short story. Included within the short story is symbolism, mostly dark due to the death of her husband. The symbolism shows the feelings of the character, her mood, and it foreshadows future events. For example, heart trouble is symbolic for love pain.
While she is upset by this, she instead thinks about the things she can do such as, “writing, teaching, raising children and cats and plants and snakes, reading, speaking publicly about MS and depression, even playing bridge” (Mairs 48) In the essay Mairs talks about two women, both with MS, living completely different lives. One lives as though she’s not disabled, while the other suffers through it, almost giving up her life to MS. When she was on her way to California for a family trip, she experienced an exacerbation but went to California anyway because she wasn’t sure whether or not she’d ever be able to make it there again. Mairs refuses to give in to the negative thoughts because she doesn’t want to make any decisions for future Nancy because she doesn’t know what future Nancy
Just as she used time of day in The Violets, she uses seasons to symbolise a time in her life. Autumn symbolises her middle age. In this stanza she paints a grim picture of her innocence lost as she has become aware of age and death by saying “we stand, two friends of middle age by your parents’ grave in silence among the avenues of the dead.” The reason she has chosen to set this part of the poem at the grave of her friend’s parents because of her love for her own parents, and she deeply empathises with her friend’s loss. It is typical in her poetry that, when the present becomes too miserable, Harwood will transcend the current time and return to a happier memory. However in this poem she cannot find a happier memory and recalls a dream instead, “I dreamed once long ago, that we walked among day-bright flowers.” Her use of positive imagery such as the “day-bright flowers” lightens the mood and achieves the same effect of the memories in The Violets, as she stops thinking of death and causes the reader to forget the unhappy nature of the initial memory and be emotionally moved by the warmth of the following memory where she is “secure in my father’s arms.” In her poems The Violets, Father and Child and At Mornington Gwen Harwood demonstrates through her use of memories, her loss of innocence, the love for her parents and how quickly time moves.
Johnson 2 “When Blanco comforts a mentally challenged high school student after being teased by the football team captain, however, she wonders if maybe she is looking for acceptance and friendship in the wrong places. She finds meaning in helping the special education kids organize a senior prom. Later, she becomes friends with Annie, the school's tough girl, who like Blanco, is an outcast looking for acceptance”. (Pior 4) Its normal wanted to be expected in high school. No matter whom it’s always good to feel wanted and liked.
Eric Peuterbaugh English 19 September 2012 William Carlos Williams William’s “To Waken An Old Lady” In this poem the speaker is attempting to portray the life of a woman. More specifically, the poem is speaking of the later years and eventual death of an old lady. The title of this poem is a metaphor for the afterlife of an old lady. Her death leads to her awakening. The speaker uses, “a flight of small cheeping birds,” as a metaphor for old age (2-3).
Change Essay September 30, 2010 A Shiloh For Rose Change greets the main female characters in the short stories “Shiloh” and “A Rose For Emily” and it's indomitable presence results in a common theme. The two women find themselves reacting to the change in their lives with different approaches, but with a common sternness. The character of Emily Grierson in “A Rose For Emily” is a secluded denier to the change that has come to her small southern town. Her first encounter with change comes after the death of her dominating father. She resists giving up his dead body, frightened by the absence of his control that has kept change from entering her life.
The values of heritage seem to have been lost with the gain of knowledge when Dee has gone to college. Her actions she displays when she comes home for a visit are shocking to her family. It is almost as if Dee is using them for a show, rather than a visit that has been well overdue. It’s one thing to know what heritage is but another to understand what your heritage is. Mama was always one who could not say “no” to her daughter and she always tried to please her regardless if her daughter appreciated it or not.
To know the importance behind Kate Chopin’s novel “The Awakening”, one needs to know a little about the times the book was written in. Around the time the novel was published, in 1899, the industrial revolution was just slowing down and woman’s rights movements were just getting started. Women still had little to no rights and were mostly expected to be stay at home mothers. Women who didn’t choose this path were often looked down upon and ridiculed. The main character in “The Awakening” is Edna Pontellier.
The “mystic shape did move” as it draws Elizabeth Barrett Browning “backward by the hair”. Death has become so prevalent that It was given its own voice, which was more than most women were even allowed this is portrayed when he whispers “Guess now who holds thee”.The presiding role of mortality shows the personification of death and portrays the attitude towards death as mere expectance. Death is seen to be the end of all things, within “The Great Gatsby” we see how this portrayed to reflect the materialism of the lives they were living. . At the end of the book we see Gatsby, Myrtle and George are all dead, and there is no obvious revival.
I will be discussing the way Dickinson explores the theme of death and how death and its relating subjects are portrayed in a number of poems namely poem 712. In poem 712 the speaker almost seems to be describing her first date. The unusual thing is though the date is death. The speaker and death travel in a carriage with immortality as a chaperone, as was the custom of the time, to different places from a school to her grave representing her passage in life. At the end of her journey we realise she has already died and is speaking from the afterlife.