The Story of an Hour
Authors of literary work have always employed stylistic devices to pass their message, Kate
Chopin was no exception. She employs a number of styles in her book, the story of an Hour.
Just like any author she achieves storytelling in a simple and straight forward manner. Some of
the stylistic devices she uses are: description, internal monologue, authorial intrusion contrast,
figurative expressions, symbolism among others.
This paper discusses the use of stylistic features in passing the message to the readers, with
considerations to the plot, the themes present and how each was achieved. For instance,
descriptions dominate the whole passage. The paper seeks to examine its significance to the
whole development of the story.
Description
Kate decisively uses description to pass her message to the intended audience much to the
understanding of it without much struggle. The reaction of Mrs. Mallard was captured as vivid
as possible. her heart failure and the response to shock, the physical and mental challenges
people with heart failure go through. In her second paragraph for example, Kate captures the
image of the place the news was broken, the people involved, their participation and roles. As
the major character, the author achieves great by explaining how even sympathy can
sometimes kill the entire mood of a heart falure victim. This is how she arrests the emotions is a
simple but compelling style. Her husband's friend Richards was there, too, near her. It was he who
had been in the newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with
Brantley Mallard's name leading the list of "killed." He had only taken the time to assure himself of its
truth b...
... middle of paper ...
...d had been told died in an accident. He was
away from the incident but the news that had reached his family had already killed his wife. The
cardiac victim.kates authorial intrusion fits into what other writers calls clear collection of thoghts into
a compelling story. To be effective, a Story has to bo more thana losely assembled collection of
facts (Kelly Leiter). This is eactly what Kate does in telling her story through her lens inat is called
authorial intrusion.
Works Cited
Baldacci, David. Total control. Warner Books , Inc, 1997.
chopin, Kate. The Story of one Hour. world text, 1894.
Kelly Leiter, Julian Harriss and Stanley johnson. The Complete Reporter. new York: Abacon publishers, 2000.
shakespeare, William. the Merchant of Venice. Macmillan, 2006.
ZInsser, William. On Writing Well. Harper Perennial, 2006.
It is not until her unfortunate murder that Angela's imprisonment gets unraveled. Her distorted emotions are revealed as this relatively unknown young woman's death is investigated. Journalists trample inside Ms. Bari's life without any regards to her in an attempt to solve this murder mystery (17). Angela's body was discovered by the porter of her apartment who is 'astonished that there should be so little blood on the floor'; when he discovers that she is lying on the ground dead after being stabbed several times (18). This is the first clue that Angela is cornered in her own little world. She has little blood, which is regarded as the seat of emotions, and her lack of such nourishment suggests that perhaps she was never nurtured. Furthermore, her cause of death, internal hemorrhage, suggests that those feelings imbedded within her were lost rapidly and uncontrollably (19). The obscure grasp Angela has of her emotions is just one facet of her imprisonment.
Another instance in which it may seem to some people reading the play that Kate is being controlled by...
Wyatt, Neal "Biography of Kate Chopin" English 384: Women Writers. Ed. Ann M. Woodlief Copyright: 1998, Virginia Commonwealth University. (26 Jan. 1999) http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/eng384/katebio.htm
Joanna Bornat ‘Kate’; the constant rediscovery of a poem in Johnson, J and De Souza, C (2nd Edition) Understanding Health and Social Care: In Introductory Reader, London, Sage/Milton Keynes, The Open University
Notably, the husband tries to bring Ann reassurance, but is unable to convey, “The husband sat in the chair beside her. He wanted to say something else. But there was no saying what it should be. He took her hand and put in his lap,” (52). As much as the husband longs to comfort his wife in this situation, he is not able because he is also muddled by the event. Like the baker, the husband can not verbally bring Ann the clarity she needs. However, Carver describes a different form of communication in the way the husband holds his wife hand. Sometimes human touch is the best way to communicate between one another, when words seem to be impossible. As Ann’s stress grows the best offer her husband can bring is for her to go home and take a bath. Both Ann and her husband find comfort in the normalcy of their home. Moreover, as Ann goes home to calm down she receives a phone call that leaves her and the reader in a state of disarray, “‘Yes,’ she said. ‘This is Mrs. Weiss. Is it about Scotty?’ she said. ‘Scotty,’ the voice said. ‘It is about Scotty,’ the voice said. ‘It has to do with Scotty, yes,’” (56). This exchange between Ann and the voice reveals the clarity Ann has wished for throughout the story. The voice repetition of “Scotty” hints at the theme of clear communication in the sense that the call has to do with her son. During the short story, Ann is desperate for word
In Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” allows one to explore many ironic instances throughout the story, the main one in which a woman unpredictably feels free after her husband’s assumed death. Chopin uses Mrs. Mallard’s bizarre story to illustrate the struggles of reaching personal freedom and trying to be true to yourself to reach self-assertion while being a part of something else, like a marriage. In “The Story of an Hour” the main character, Mrs. Mallard, celebrates the death of her husband, yet Chopin uses several ironic situations and certain symbols to criticize the behavior of Mrs. Mallard during the time of her “loving” husband’s assumed death.
influence all her life and struggles to accept her true identity. Through the story you can
She proclaims her husbands love throughout the story, I feel, in an attempt to bind the disconnection she feels with her husband.
In this story by Kate Chopin, the heart trouble is both a symbolic and physical malady that stands for her ambivalence towards her unhappiness and marriage conjoined inability to be free. The first thing we qauire in the book is that Louise is suffering from a heart problem;additionally we learn that her heart problem is also the reason why the announcement of the death of Brently seems so threatening now. It is also clear that an individual with a heart problem would certainly not deal with such terrible news. In any instance where Louise tries to go through the idea of her renewed independence, her heart races as the blood in her veins pumps to the extremes. As the story ends, Louise dies. The diagnosis of her heart disease looks appropriate to her disease but it seems even more appropriate since she experienced shock once she saw Brently. Surely, such shock is enough to drive her to her deathbed. It is however ironic that the doctor concludes that the main reason as to the death of Louiseis overwhelming joy. It is ironic because it is not joy that had led to her death but rather loss of joy, which had killed her. Louise had certainly died because of a broken heart that was caused by the idea of suddenly losing her much loved independence (Chopin, The Story of an Hour)
...dition, so the doctor thought that this weakness was the reason she died.What really killed her was being put back into the role that was forced and expected of her. When her husband walked in, all of her feminine freedom vanished.
tragedies that befell her. She is an example of a melancholic character that is not able to let go of her loss and therefore lets it t...
also why the author has her speaking in monologue form. It is anoher way we feel
In this story the narrator focuses on how Mrs. Mallard copes with the death of her husband. The plot defines to the reader what happens in a story by how she reacts to the news of her husband just being killed in a train accident. Looking deeper into this story the theme shows you her underlying feelings demonstration of the impression behind the story by showing almost relief and freedom, through the utilization of different symbols and tones. On the surface you see details such as the phrase “She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same” (Clugston, 2010, sec 2.1). This phrase sets a tone of sadness and question of why she took the news so differently than many other women.
Setting exists in every form of fiction, representing elements of time, place, and social context throughout the work. These elements can create particular moods, character qualities, or features of theme. Throughout Kate Chopin's short story "The Story of an Hour," differing amounts and types of the setting are revealed as the plot develops. This story deals with a young woman's emotional state as she discovers her own independence in her husband's death, then her "tragic" discovery that he is actually alive. The constituents of setting reveal certain characteristics about the main character, Louise Mallard, and are functionally important to the story structure. The entire action takes place in the springtime of a year in the 1890s, in the timeframe of about an hour, in a house belonging to the Mallards. All of these aspects of setting become extremely relevant and significant as the meaning of the story unfolds.
The first reader has a guided perspective of the text that one would expect from a person who has never studied the short story; however the reader makes some valid points which enhance what is thought to be a guided knowledge of the text. The author describes Mrs. Mallard as a woman who seems to be the "victim" of an overbearing but occasionally loving husband. Being told of her husband's death, "She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance." (This shows that she is not totally locked into marriage as most women in her time). Although "she had loved him--sometimes," she automatically does not want to accept, blindly, the situation of being controlled by her husband. The reader identified Mrs. Mallard as not being a "one-dimensional, clone-like woman having a predictable, adequate emotional response for every life condition." In fact the reader believed that Mrs. Mallard had the exact opposite response to the death her husband because finally, she recognizes the freedom she has desired for a long time and it overcomes her sorrow. "Free! Body and soul free! She kept whispering." We can see that the reader got this idea form this particular phrase in the story because it illuminates the idea of her sorrow tuning to happiness.