To Fail or not to Fail
The characters of Edna, Mr. Oakhurst, The Innocent, Piney, Mother Shipton, and The Duchess all face different forms of failure in their respective stories, The Awakening and “The Outcasts of Poker Flat”. Each character has a unique response to failure; some bend, while others break. Though at times people fall short of their goals, it is not necessarily the human lot to try and fail; sometimes people make the choice to fail by losing hope, or by viewing death as failure, or by having a negative outlook on life, but it is essentially they themselves who allow the failure- it all stems from the person’s perspective and individual choices. Even though humans don’t always succeed in their endeavors, humans are not predestined to fail.
Hope is arguably the one thing that keeps humans moving forward. Without it, there is no motivation, no reason to wake up in the morning. When people start to lose hope, they start to lose a part of themselves, and are driven toward despair. In The Awakening, the protagonist, Edna, says over and over again how despondent she is, which leads to her eventual suicide. It has been said that “There is no failure except in no longer trying,” and sadly, Edna gave into despair and lost the will to keep going. She felt as though life was no longer worth the effort, and decided death would be better than living a lie. And yet, there’s always more than one door to take. Edna didn’t search for other options- for her, it was either be untrue to her feelings, live without Robert, or death. She was too strong to pick the first, but too weak to
consider the second; she was awakened to her feelings, but blind to alternatives.
Dorothy Thompson once said, “Courage, it would se...
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...e Billy’s “failure” to do the right thing probably wasn’t much of a failure to him. Perspective defines failure, not some outside force.
What exactly is failure? It is, according to the dictionary, “Lack of success.” Many people say that “failure isn’t the falling down, but the staying down.” But who are we to say? Lack of hope, the thought that death and failure are one and the same, and a pessimistic outlook on life can cause someone to fail, but thankfully not everyone falls victim to these. Failure is always controversial, because people view things and events differently. As Elaine Maxewell once said, “My will shall shape the future. Whether I fail or succeed shall be no man's doing but my own. I am the force; I can clear any obstacle before me or I can be lost in the maze. My choice; my responsibility; win or lose, only I hold the key to my destiny.”
John Oakhurst is the main character in “The Outcasts of Poker Flat”. John is an outstanding person and has some phenomenal traits. Such as that he is unusually calm, courageous, and modest.
When individuals face obstacles in life, there is often two ways to respond to those hardships: some people choose to escape from the reality and live in an illusive world. Others choose to fight against the adversities and find a solution to solve the problems. These two ways may lead the individuals to a whole new perception. Those people who decide to escape may find themselves trapped into a worse or even disastrous situation and eventually lose all of their perceptions and hops to the world, and those who choose to fight against the obstacles may find themselves a good solution to the tragic world and turn their hopelessness into hopes. Margaret Laurence in her short story Horses of the Night discusses the idea of how individual’s responses
to it because his fate did not lead him there. Billy applied the fact that he had to accept
There is social stigma that comes with the word, failure. Personally, when I think of the word, I think about my personal failures and the failures I have witnessed firsthand. Failure is viewed as an incomplete attempt at a task due to the persons inability to succeed. There is a underlining message we need to
In early American literature, many authors began shifting the focus of their works from the refined upper class citizens to the real every-day experiences of the American people. As a result of this shift, authors began writing about life in the small towns scattered across the United States, while focusing on non-typical and socially and morally lowly characters. A perfect example of this type of writing can be found in “The Outcasts of Poker Flat,” a short story written by Bret Harte. In this story we are introduced to four characters, cast from their pioneertown for participating in morally objectionable activities. The four consisted of John Oakhurst, a gambler, Duchess, a prostitute, Mother Shipton, a madam, and Uncle Billy, a local drunk
What is there to attempt when the consciousness of an insuperable conundrum is surfaced to realization? This topic is considered in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening in which a young woman, Edna, recognizes the social constraint that men generally had on women as a married mother herself. Despite her identification, continued attempts for liberation only ended in inexorable defeat. In contrast, the perception of an ongoing dilemma can sometimes conclude in the ultimate goal: positive change. Examples akin to Martin Luther King Jr. in the attempt for racial justice and Abraham Lincoln for the abolishment of habitual slavery illustrate the possibility for success. Other times, this cognizance provides the comprehension that the hindrance
Yaeger Summary Patricia Yaeger’s analysis of The Awakening by Kate Chopin reveals to the readers that Edna’s “emancipatory moments are contained in those unstable instances of self-questioning and dialogue with herself” (Yaeger 205), further leading to her eternal vocal and physical entrapment through the ocean. Yaeger thoroughly expresses this idea through her confliction of men’s speech versus women’s speech and how they differ vastly. As Yaeger explains, Edna feels as though she is trapped inside her own head and cannot express her true thoughts and desires to anyone, as no one would bother to listen.
“Edna began to feel like one who awakens gradually out of a dream, a delicious, grotesque, impossible dream, to feel again the realities oppressing into her soul.” (Pg. 42) In Kate Chopin’s novel The Awakening the constant boundaries and restrictions placed on Edna Pontellier by society will lead to her struggle for freedom and her ultimate suicide. Her husband Leonce Pontellier, the current women of society, and the Grand Isle make it evident that Edna is trapped in a patriarchal society.
Failure to me was the position I was stuck in as a little girl, my family was stuck with little resources and stayed in the same neighborhood. In order for my expectations of my life to be where they are at now, they required me to live with that failure.
Kate Chopin’s The Awakening should be seen as depicting the discontentment that comes from self-gratification rather than the glorification of delighting in one’s fantasies. Chopin describes the central idea of one who is seeking to please her personal needs and desires and, in the process, neglects to notice how her actions affect others. The protagonist, Edna, is not able to find peace or happiness in the accepted daily life that a woman of her era and social status should have. The fulfilling of her desires could essentially cause social ostracism for her, her husband, and her children, yet she is unable to find repose in living the typical social Victorian life. The final resolve of her “awakening” to her desires, her ultimate suicide, is not an honorable position that women should strive toward as a romantic ideal because her desires were hopeless in her situation. Through Edna’s striving for personal satisfaction, she loses the joys that daily life has to offer.
In the novella The Awakening by Kate Chopin, the main character Edna Pontellier “becomes profoundly alienated from traditional roles required by family, country, church, or other social institutions and is unable to reconcile the desire for connection with others with the need for self-expression” (Bogard). The novella takes place in the South during the 1800’s when societal views and appearances meant everything. There were numerous rules and expectations that must be upheld by both men and women, and for independent, stubborn, and curious women such as Edna, this made life challenging. Edna expressed thoughts and goals far beyond her time that made her question her role in life and struggle to identify herself, which caused her to break societal conventions, damage her relationships, and ultimately lose everything.
In the 1800’s, if women were to act differently then what was the “social norm” it was taken to be either an act of defiance or mental illness, which explains the negative critiques following the release of The Awakening deeming it as immoral, it was so controversial that it was later censored. The Awakening written by Kate Chopin in 1899 speaks of sin, lust, freedom from social constraints and the journey of finding one’s self; these ideas are shown through Edna’s actions and her relationships with men.
In Kate Chopin's The Awakening, the principal character, Edna decides to kill herself rather than to live a lie. It seemed to Kate that the time of her own death was the only thing remaining under her control since society had already decided the rest of her life for her. Edna was a woman of the wrong times; she wanted her independence and she wanted to be with her lover, Robert. This type of behavior would never be accepted by the society of her time. Edna's relationship with Robert, and her rejection of the role dictated to her by society, resulted in her perceiving suicide to be the only solution to her problems.
In America, the 1890s were a decade of tension and social change. A central theme in Kate Chopin’s fiction was the independence of women. In Louisiana, most women were their husband’s property. The codes of Napoleon were still governing the matrimonial contract. Since Louisiana was a Catholic state, divorce was rare and scandalous. In any case, Edna Pontellier of Chopin had no legal rights for divorce, even though Léonce undoubtedly did. When Chopin gave life to a hero that tested freedom’s limits, she touched a nerve of the politic body. However, not Edna’s love, nor her artistic inner world, sex, or friendship can reconcile her personal growth, her creativity, her own sense of self and her expectations. It is a very particular academic fashion that has had Edna transformed into some sort of a feminist heroine. If she could have seen that her awakening in fact was a passion for Edna herself, then perhaps her suicide would have been avoided. Everyone was forced to observe, including the cynics that only because a young
Everyone in life experiences failure. It can affect people positively or negatively and that all depends on how they react to the experience. If one lets their failure overcome their dreams, it will lead them in the wrong path. But if one views their failures as a motive to succeed and grow, then they are on their way to becoming successful. For me, I let my failures in life help build onto my character and define the person I am today. My childhood injury is my example as I let this moment affect the outcome of my dreams I had then.