Compare And Contrast The Storm And Birdsong By Kate Chopin

Looking in the mirror and realizing your imperfections, or fighting a losing battling against your conscience. Moments of awakenings we call them, reflecting on the mistakes we’ve made or regretting the temptations we’ve allowed to overpower us. It’s a feeling of emptiness mixed with knowledge, understanding and relief.

In both Kate Chopin’s “The Storm” and Chimamanda Adichie’s “Birdsong” we read about characters going through moments of awakening. Both main characters, females finding themselves in sticky situations with a male love interest. Calixta, a married mother momentarily falling back into the arms of her first love, and a young working women in Lagos Nigeria finding herself in a confusing but pleasure full affair with an older,

During this time a storm develops leaving them stranded seeking shelter. Alce, the character who appears to be Calixta first love suddenly appears at her house as she is alone seeking shelter from the storm himself. They had not laid eyes on each other since Calixtra was married which from a passage in the text indicated it had been five years at this points “She was a little fuller of figure than five years before” (The Storm, by Kate Chopin). Surprised to see him she invited him in which resulted in the room being filled with feelings and the sensation of flesh they craved for each other. Like the scene in Titanic they drift away making love to each other passionately. At the beginning Calixtra fights to resist the temptation “Bont! She cried, releasing herself from his encircling arms and retreating from the window” (The Storm, by Kate Chopin) but is ultimately overpower by temptation. Calixtra’s moment of awakening comes when Bobint and Bibi returns and she affectionately attends to her husband and effusively kissing her son. In this moment she see what she has, an amazing family. This is a women how just cheated on her husband with a man she has held feelings for but the love for her husband a family unit holds more values, weirdly it took her committing a wrong deed to realize this. Her moment of awakening in the case was positive though

This young lady was left distract, and broken by a whirlpool love affair. The story takes us into the mind of someone who is in an intents battle with their conscience. As she is stuck in Lagos traffic there is a women fitting in her mind to be her lover’s wife intensely steering at her. This takes her into the fear of guilt and the fear of being confronted. The story goes on in full details of their affair from the first time they meant at her place of employment to her moving into one of his houses. The man in the story is complexed, successful and handsome, one any young women could easily fall for. Toward her he was very affectionate, caring, and saw to it she was is need of nothing. He also not intentionally I believe showed here is heart truly reside and that was with his wife. As the story goes on this young lady start to realize a few things, like the fact that he never spoke about his wife or that whenever she called he went to another room. Also they only dine at one local restaurant where the staff never greeted her and there was also an incident were his personal driver showed her little to no respect with no discipline from her lover. With all of this she realized what she really was to him and that was a space holder, someone to have while away from his wife. Once going through his phone she found conversations between him and his wife where he used the same joke they