To Build A Fire Essay

The Hour of What Fire?

After reading both of the stories "The Story of an Hour” and “To Build a Fire” I have been asked which story I preferred more. Both of the stories had their own unique qualities that teaches different lessons. It was a hard choice to make but I chose the story "The Story of The Hour."

I chose "The Story of The Hour". Even though when I read the story I could not understand what it was saying. I could not understand what the author, Kate Chopin, was trying to say. Then after talking about the story in class I finally understood it. Unlike the story “To Build a Fire” I understood the story while reading it. So at I first thought I preferred "To Build a Fire". But as I thought about it "The Story of an Hour” has a deeper

meaning to me. "The Story of an Hour" is convening the issue of women and their independence to me. As I am female I can relate to the message.
In the story Chopin uses the situation that a women named Mrs. Mallard that thought her husband died and that she was finally free but than dies from a heart attack from the surprise of her husband coming back. This story was written about a hundred years ago so women's independence was looked down upon. So it says that she want to be free and the only way was that her husband to die. So she way sad that he died at first and was happy that she was free. But when he came back she had a heart attack due to a weak heart.
As for "To Build a Fire" it still has a really deep lesson of listening and imaging. The story written by Jack Loudon is about a man that goes alone in the Yukon with a wolf dog and he didn't listen to the old man and died from the cold because he went alone and could not start a fire. As well this story was written about 100 years. This message to me is a more common message. More writers I feel have this in their writing. So I made my choice mostly base on the fact that "The Story of The Hour" had a harder message to convey and Chopin does it well.
Now to expand on the time period of the publication.

So as I said these stories were written about hundred years ago. There has been the question of, do these messages still relate to modern situation today? So I thought about situations that would apply to the messages. For "The Story of The Hour" I thought of situations of women in a marriage. A women could be stuck without their independence in society today. A situation could be a women is married to an abusive man and she would not get a divorce. Now in modern times a divorce would have been the easy way to go. But there are always why people don't get one. Some reasons could be that the women could be embarrassed to get one. Another reason could be that the man would lash out to the wife for bringing the idea of divorce up. So yes there is the same message there but just different settings. Same goes with "To Build a Fire".

The message conveyed in "To Build a Fire" also can fit in modern day. There can be many examples. One of the many examples could be that someone goes camping and thinks he or she is prepare but does not think anything could go wrong. And then they parents tell them but they won't listen. So after the camping trip he or she comes home with a broken arm or worse. If they had just thought and listened there would be a smaller percentage of error and being

harmed.
So yes, no matter the time these issues and messages will still exist. The only things that would change are the people, settings, values, and thought process. So both of these stories have deep and important messages. And the they still exist in modern day, even though the message was written about hundred years ago. I want to fix that the fact these messages still exist. Because if I did then the world would start to be an even better place to be in.