The Awakening
Style
Kate Chopin has style that makes her work seem more like a story told in person just for the reader than one written in a book to a diverse audience of potential readers. She tends to go into great detail over the thoughts and actions of characters, giving the reader insight they would not normally have, almost as if they were mind readers witnessing the event. When Chopin describes the situations her characters are in, she tends to utilize short, to the point sentences that are the bare minimum to cover said situation, followed by a very long sentence that expands upon the first. She also tends to use short sentences in quick succession to illustrate a point. Often these are character realizations, and it feels like a short train of thought leading to a conclusion within the character's mind. These sections usually use anaphora, the repetition pounding the ideas into the reader's head. As stated before, Chopin describes most everything in great detail. Her choice of words goes between passive observation and strong opinion. When describing scenery, she might describe the colors and situation of it, or she may become excited and give a fervent description polluted by the feelings of Edna, the main character. These changes in diction add to the story, and the reader is no longer a reader yet again. Instead, this style allows us to feel changes in the mood of the characters. Rather than being told “He was happy”, “He was passionate”, “He was apathetic”, the reader feels like they are entering the scene and tasting the mood themselves. This change in diction also tends to accompany a change in tone. In the beginning of the story, the tone was one of anticipation, as a patient child waiting for a caterpillar to ...
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... their purpose or just understand themselves and their person. While it is more geared towards female readers, I believe that was Chopin's intention, as that feminist theme/viewpoint IS still there. She made it more for female readers in that time so that they might realize themselves and feel that they can make their of lives and do things to please themselves, rather than solely do things for others.
Chopin's style, as mentioned before, is what captivates the reader. It gives the story personality, every quirk in her writing evident and interesting. The words used are exactly what she means them to be, and more. Her use of literary devices paints a stunning picture of life in the late nineteenth century, especially her unique use of syntax.
All in all, this novel is a good read, so long as the reader takes the time to think about everything that goes into it.
This book is a very interesting read, if you have some self discipline. I mean that you need some self discipline because this book didn’t really captivate me in the sense that I couldn’t put it down. But after reading it for a while, I started to appreciate the author’s way of describing the characters and actions in this book.
The portrayal of this theme, however, is accomplished in different ways by Henry James and Kate Chopin. The main reason for this is that although the theme is common to both works, the protagonists' experience of it are not. Conventionality has entrapped them in different ways, and their instinctive reactions arise out of differing circumstances.
“The Storm” by Kate Chopin is a short story that touches on the controversial subject of adultery. The two characters Calixta and Alcee were both happily married. They reunited spontaneously during the midst of a severe storm, when old feelings resurfaced. Their actions out of lust were feelings they had long forgotten. Soon enough the storm had calmed, and the two parted ways; smiling back at each other they said their goodbyes. Their actions were without the intention of being deceitful, but rather uncontrollable. In the end it is ironic that the infidelity strengthened one marriage’s relationship and made the other character realize the importance of marriage through his wrong doings.
The first thing I noticed about Kate Chopin’s “The Storm,” is that it is utterly dripping with sexual imagery and symbolism. Our heroine, if you will, seems to be a woman with normally restrained passions and a well-defined sense of propriety, who finds herself in a situation that tears down her restraint and reveals the vixen within. I wonder if it was intentional that the name Calixta makes me think of Calypso – the nymph from Greek mythology. If half of the sexual symbolism I found in this story was intentional, Chopin was a genius. I was quite taken with the sexual imagery of the colors mentioned: white, and red. There is also mention a place called Assumption, while there’s nothing written on it in the bible, I believe it’s the popular opinion of those of Christian faiths, that Mary (Jesus’ mother) going to heaven was called “The Assumption.” Again, I cannot accept that as merely a happy coincidence, I believe its mention in the story was intentional. Finally, we have the storm, so central to the theme of the story that it was named for it. In this work, as well as others by Chopin, there is a recurring theme of infidelity, or women behaving in ways that society generally doesn’t accept, women behaving badly, if you will, I cannot help but wonder if Kate Chopin used her writing to express desires that she would not otherwise have expressed.
Effectively using these elements in a piece of literature enhances the reader’s curiosity. One prime example of such usage of these elements is seen in Kate Chopin's writing. Her use of foreshadowing and use of emotional conflicts put into few words in the short piece "The Storm" adds an element that is alluring, holding the reader's interest. In this short piece of literature, a father and son, Bobinot and Bibi, are forced to remain in a store where they were shopping before the storm, waiting for the storm to pass over them. In the meantime, the wife and mother, Calixta, whom is still at home, receives an unexpected visit from a former lover named Alicee. The two have an affair and the story starts to come together. The story shows us how we tend to want what we beli...
Bryfonski, Dedria, ed. Women's Issues in Kate Chopin's The Awakening. Farmington Hills, MI: Greenhaven, 2012. Print.
A theme in which plays an important part in the novel, The Awakening, is that choices have inevitable consequences. This is connected with Realism because a big belief in Realism is; ethical choices are often the subject, character is more important than action and plot. In multiple cases in this novel, the reader sees the type of choices the characters make and the effects and outcomes that follow after them. Also in some ways, people change their personality and their change in character adds a part in their future. Leonce choice of how he views Edna and he treats her have an effect on him and consequences on and her. Edna is a big part of this novel being the main protagonist and all of her ethical choices that have an enormous consequence on her. Some of these choices are, wanting to be with Robert, to follow the path of Mademoiselle Reisz and becoming an artist, and ultimately deciding to take her life.
Kate Chopin's The Awakening is a terrific read and I am hardly able to put it down! I am up to chapter XV and many of the characters are developing in very interesting ways. Edna is unfulfilled as a wife and mother even though she and her husband are financially well off. Her husband, Leonce Pontellier, is a good husband and father but he has only been paying attention to his own interests. At this point he is unaware of the fact that his wife's needs are not being met. Robert and the other characters are equally intriguing but something else has piqued my interest. Some of Chopin's characters are not fully developed. I know that these are important characters because they are representative of specific things; they are metaphoric characters. In particular, I've noticed the lovers and the lady in black. I'm fascinated by the fact that both the lovers and the lady in black are completely oblivious to the rest of the world. They are also in direct contrast with each another. For this week's reader response I am taking a different approach. Rather than analyzing the main characters, I will examine the lovers and the lady in black.
My overall opinion of this book is good I really liked it and recommend it to anyone. It is a good book to read and it keep you interested throughout the whole book.
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.
Through these shared images and the ideas that they represent, the two passages link and reflect upon one another and the characters' situations. This linkage enhances the palpable visual and sensual nature of the novel, thus beautifully presenting Chopin's multi-layered vision of solitude.
The background of both authors, which was from the South, we can conclude how they could described the situations that they faced such as political and social presumptions problems especially for women at that time. The story explains how Chopin wrote how women were to be "seen but not heard". "The wife cannot plead in her own name, without the authority of her husband, even though she should be a public
...use of imagery in her writing gives it a more natural feel, blending the emotions of the story as a chameleon does itself in the trees. Many authors do not use such techniques in their writing, leading to a lack of substance in some cases. Without the images of nature that Chopin incorporates into her stories, they would not be as enjoyable to read as they are.
There were more clues to unpack than expected but once I realized the writing style of Kate Chopin I enjoyed reading each sentence to pick out the hidden meaning. Xuding Wang’s essay was helpful seeing what I could not see on my own. The point that grabbed me out of Wang’s essay was the critic, Berkove, whom as I mentioned earlier in this analysis seemed to be the same blockade to women that Chopin wrote about in 1894. To know the character in the story you must know the writer. Kate Chopin was called a rebel in her time. Her stories were a call to action by women and to go as far as Berkove did and call those ideas delusional make him seem out dated and controlling. I can only experience what I do in life. I’ll never understand challenges faced by people of other races, cultures, or sex. Reading the original story and another woman’s discussion on it was very enlightening. There were emotions described that I’ve never considered. With a critic like Berkove using language as he did in the critique against Chopin’s work it makes me curious just how far our society has come. Racism is still alive and well, religious persecution and in this story, sexism. It seems to me that the world has never really changed and will continue to bring with it the same problems as the days
... it has incredible depth. Every character in her story wanted something, the neighbor to see her sick mother, the children to be cared for, and Mamzelle Aurlie to no longer be alone. Every sentence had significance, whether to tell us something about Mamzelle Aurlie or let us know why something was happening. Chopin also gives the reader an immense amount of information within the first paragraphs she does not wait or lead up to it. By the third paragraph we know pretty much all there is to know about Mamzelle Aurlie. Still, what really reveals the talent of Chopin is that in less than two thousand words she can tell the story of a life.