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The Awakening was written by Kate Chopin, and published in 1899. The story takes place in the 1800s in Grand Isle New Orleans.
This story is entertaining , but yet powerful at the same time. It has many themes that the audience can identify with. Some themes include love, sexual, society standards, and isolation. These themes make the book have several feelings and several interpretations. Not only themes makes the book more intense but also the use of Figurative language. Kate Chopin uses imagery, personification, metaphors, similes, syntax, and mostly symbolism. Symbolism plays an important role throughout the book because it tells the reader exactly how they feel using objects, characters, figures, and colors to represent abstract ideas
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or concepts. In this story as the story goes on there are many use of symbols. The author uses many colors, and objects to represent Edna's life, as well as the lives of other characters. One of the most significant symbols they use in the story are birds. According to dictonary.com birds are any warm-blooded vertebrate of the class Aves, having a body covered with feathers, forelimbs modified into wings, scaly legs, a beak, and no teeth, and bearing young in a hard-shelled egg, but in The Awakening it represents Edna’s life. In the beginning of the story the caged birds are Edna. When birds are caged they are trapped, without freedom, and unhappy, that was Edna's life with her husband, childrens, and society. She was a women who had wings, but could never fly. She used them to protect and and secure herself, since she could could not do anything to change society. Edna was stuck in a life where she would have to be like everyone else and do what society “Expected” from her. “ Allez vous-en! Allez vous-en! Sapristi!" which translates to “ Go away! Go away! For heaven's sake!” the parrot yelled. He represented Edna; since she wanted everyone to be quiet and leave but since they did not, she was caged to staying there with her unhappy life (Chopin 1). As Edna tries to get away from her family and society, she comes upon another cage.
The pigeon house, which for Edna represents independence.
In chapter 27 Mademoiselle Reisz tells Edna how she must be strong and be like a bird; “ she felt my shoulder blades to see if my wings were strong" she said. "The bird that would soar above the level of plain tradition and prejudice must have strong wings. It is a sad spectacle to see the weaklings bruised, exhausted, fluttering back to earth" (Chopin 83). This shows how Reisz told her if she was going to deny her husband and family she should not care about what others thought as long as she was happy.
The last sentence that says "It is a sad spectacle to see the weaklings bruised, exhausted, fluttering back to earth" is an example of the foreshadowing that the author uses in the story. For example at the end of the book as Edna was completely naked in front of the ocean, alone, she saw a hurt bird, " A bird with a broken wing was beating the air above, reeling, fluttering, circling disabled down, down to the water"
( Chopin 115). Edna became the bird; She realized she would never be free again and how she has failed to being independent and having a untraditional life with her heart completely
broken. Another significant symbol is the sea. According to Dictionary.com the sea is the salt waters that cover the greater part of the earth's surface. In the Awakening the sea represents Edna's freedom, independence and escaped.Throughout her life she was unhappy and trapped. Edna came upon her final awakening; she saw her death as her freedom, and even though it was a cowardly way out she decided to choose death over a life she cannot fully live and be happy. The bird was finally free, and even though it was not the best choice Edna was finally free and happy, even if it meant not being in this world anymore. Kate Chopin uses this technique of symbolism because it is easier for the audience to see how the characters feel using symbols, because it gives a significant meaning to it that makes the story more powerful with interpretations that will make the audience feel the way they do as if they were living it too.
Chopin mentions birds in a subtle way at many points in the plot and if looked at closely enough they are always linked back to Edna and her journey of her awakening. In the first pages of the novella, Chopin reveals Madame Lebrun's "green and yellow parrot, which hung in a cage" (Chopin 1). The caged bird at the beginning of the novella points out Edna's subconscious feeling of being entrapped as a woman in the ideal of a mother-woman in Creole society. The parrot "could speak a little Spanish, and also a language which nobody understood" (1). The parrot's lack of a way to communicate because of the unknown language depicts Edna's inability to speak her true feelings and thoughts. It is for this reason that nobody understands her and what she is going through. A little further into the story, Madame Reisz plays a ballad on the piano. The name of which "was something else, but [Edna] called it Solitude.' When she heard it there came before her imagination the figure of a man standing on a desolate rock on the seashore His attitude was one of hopeless resignation as he looked toward a distant bird winging its flight away from him" (25). The bird in the distance symbolizes Edna's desire of freedom and the man in the vision shows the longing for the freedom that is so far out of reach. At the end of the story, Chopin shows "a bird with a broken wing beating the air above, reeling, fluttering, circling disabled down, down to the water" while Edna is swimming in the ocean at the Grand Isle shortly before she drowns (115). The bird stands for the inability to stray from the norms of society and become independent without inevitably falling from being incapable of doing everything by herself. The different birds all have different meanings for Edna but they all show the progression of her awakening.
Kate Chopin’s The Awakening takes place in the late 19th century, in Grande Isle off the coast of Louisiana. The author writes about the main character, Edna Pontellier, to express her empowering quality of life. Edna is a working housewife,and yearns for social freedom. On a quest of self discovery, Edna meets Madame Ratignolle and Mademoiselle Reisz, falls in and out of love,and eventually ends up taking her own life. Kate Chopin’s The Awakening shows how the main character Edna Pontellier has been trapped for so many years and has no freedom, yet Edna finally “awakens” after so long to her own power and her ability to be free.
When her husband and children are gone, she moves out of the house and purses her own ambitions. She starts painting and feeling happier. “There were days when she was very happy without knowing why. She was happy to be alive and breathing when her whole being seemed to be one with the sunlight, the color, the odors, the luxuriant warmth of some perfect Southern day” (Chopin 69). Her sacrifice greatly contributed to her disobedient actions. Since she wanted to be free from a societal rule of a mother-woman that she never wanted to be in, she emphasizes her need for expression of her own passions. Her needs reflect the meaning of the work and other women too. The character of Edna conveys that women are also people who have dreams and desires they want to accomplish and not be pinned down by a stereotype.
Leonce Pontellier, the husband of Edna Pontellier in Kate Chopin's The Awakening, becomes very perturbed when his wife, in the period of a few months, suddenly drops all of her responsibilities. After she admits that she has "let things go," he angrily asks, "on account of what?" Edna is unable to provide a definite answer, and says, "Oh! I don't know. Let me along; you bother me" (108). The uncertainty she expresses springs out of the ambiguous nature of the transformation she has undergone. It is easy to read Edna's transformation in strictly negative terms‹as a move away from the repressive expectations of her husband and society‹or in strictly positive terms‹as a move toward the love and sensuality she finds at the summer beach resort of Grand Isle. While both of these moves exist in Edna's story, to focus on one aspect closes the reader off to the ambiguity that seems at the very center of Edna's awakening. Edna cannot define the nature of her awakening to her husband because it is not a single edged discovery; she comes to understand both what is not in her current situation and what is another situation. Furthermore, the sensuality that she has been awakened to is itself not merely the male or female sexuality she has been accustomed to before, but rather the sensuality that comes in the fusion of male and female. The most prominent symbol of the book‹the ocean that she finally gives herself up to‹embodies not one aspect of her awakening, but rather the multitude of contradictory meanings that she discovers. Only once the ambiguity of this central symbol is understood can we read the ending of the novel as a culmination and extension of the themes in the novel, and the novel regains a...
Often in novels, a character faces conflicting directions of ambitions, desires, and influences. In such a novel, like “The Awakening,'; the main character, Edna Pontellier, faces these types of conflicting ideas. In a controversial era for women, Edna faces the conflict of living in oppression but desiring freedom. The patriarchal time period has influenced women to live only under the husband’s thumb but at the same time, break away from such repression. These opposing conflicts illuminated the meaning of “social awakening'; in the novel.
Throughout Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, Edna Pontellier, the main protagonist, experiences multiple awakenings—the process in which Edna becomes aware of her life and the constraints place on it—through her struggles with interior emotional issues regarding her true identity: the confines of marriage vs. her yearning for intense passion and true love. As Edna begins to experience these awakenings she becomes enlightened of who she truly and of what she wants. As a result, Edna breaks away from what society deems acceptable and becomes awakened to the flaws of the many rules and expected behavior that are considered norms of the time. One could argue that Kate Chopin’s purpose in writing about Edna’s inner struggles and enlightenment was to
Individual will is a force that is significant, and yet can be manipulated by a more powerful source. In the Victorian Age setting within The Awakening by Kate Chopin, men have been manipulated by society. They are forced to reflect their norms on women. These norms have been caused repressive and manipulative behavior within men. Edna Pontellier, protagonist of the novel, confronts several men who confront her yearning for individualism. Each male plays a role ordained by society and as a result they develop characteristics that promote specific, yet conflicting images to the reader.
Kate Chopin's novella, The Awakening. In Kate Chopin's novella, The Awakening, the reader is introduced into. a society that is strictly male-dominated where women fill in the stereotypical role of watching the children, cooking, cleaning and keeping up with appearances. Writers often highlight the values of a certain society by introducing a character who is alienated from their culture by a trait such as gender, race, or creed.
Ranging from caged parrots to the meadow in Kentucky, symbols and settings in The Awakening are prominent and provide a deeper meaning than the text does alone. Throughout The Awakening by Kate Chopin, symbols and setting recur representing Edna’s current progress in her awakening. The reader can interpret these and see a timeline of Edna’s changes and turmoil as she undergoes her changes and awakening.
In Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, Edna Pontellier’s suicide is an assertion of her independence and contributes to Chopin’s message that to be independent one must choose between personal desires and societal expectations. Chopin conveys this message through Edna’s reasons for committing suicide and how doing so leads her to total independence. Unlike the other women of Victorian society, Edna is unwilling to suppress her personal identity and desires for the benefit of her family. She begins “to realize her position in the universe as a human being and to recognize her relationship as an individual to the world within and about her” (35).
When she visits Madame Reisz for consulting, she warns Edna of the strength it will take to metaphorically fly above her social roles. Ultimately, Edna decides she cannot sacrifice herself for anyone else, even her own children. She decides to move out of her husband’s house and into the pigeon house, taking only the possessions he did not buy for her. Soon, she realizes the pigeon house acts as a cage just as much as her old home did. In the end, her internal conflict tears her apart and, to escape the feeling of entrapment, she drowns
In contrast to caged birds, Chopin uses wild birds and the idea of flight as symbols of freedom. This symbol is shown in a vision of a bird experienced by Edna while Mademoiselle Reisz is playing the piano.
The birds are the major symbolic images from the very beginning of the novel: "A green and yellow parrot, which hung in a cage outside the door, kept repeating over and over: `Allez vous-en! Allez vous-en! Sapristi! That's all right!'" (Chopin pp3) In The Awakening, caged birds represent Edna's entrapment. She is caged as a wife and mother; she is never expected to actually be able to think and make decisions for herself. The caged birds also symbolize the entrapment of Victorian women in general since their movements are limited by the rules of the society that they live in. Just like Edna the parrot cannot communicate its feelings because the parrot speaks in "a language which nobody [understands]" (Chopin pp3). Edna’s feelings are incomprehensible to the members of Creole society. Chopin uses wild birds and the idea of flight to symbolize freedom. Edna experiences a vision while Mademoiselle Reisz is playing piano and this vision includes the wild birds and flight. "When she heard it there came before her imagination the figure of a man standing beside a desolate rock on the seashore. He was naked. His attitude was one of hopeless resignation as he looked toward a distant bird winging its flight away from him." (Chopin pp26-27) Here Edna is showing her intense desire for freedom, a desire to escape from her roles as a wife and mother, and also from her husband Léonce. Léonce oppresses Edna by restricting her to a social cage. Edna thus begins to express her desire for complete independence through her move to the pigeon house "because it's so small and looks like a pige...
This essay will focus on the short story by Kate Chopin and its use of symbols, setting and characters. Desiree’s baby was perhaps one of the best stories I’ve ever read. Analyzing it was not easy at all. Its use of symbols was very hard to comprehend. At first, it doesn’t make sense. But as you think critically, all the symbols, and setting and the characters in this literature plunge together in one amazing story.
The ending passage shows none of the conflict imagery as does the beginning, but rather images of giving up. “The old terror flamed up for an instant, then sank again” refers on the surface to Edna’s fear of swimming, but could on another level indicate the fear hinted at in the first passage that drove her to grow and fight. Hence her drive has, like the terror, sunk, ceased to be. The image of the old dog contrasts with the lively image of the parrot; while caged, there is little fight against it. The fact that the dog is old suggests dullness and sedentariness; it probably isn’t going anywhere. There is still confinement, but no struggle. Also the cavalry officer could represent an army. An army is something that cannot be conquered, as are the forces in Edna’s life that cause her to do what she is about to do.