Digging deeper into Desiree’s Baby In first grade, the first lesson in literature is about plot. Youngsters toil through their picture books trying to identify the sequence of events in the story; bonus points are awarded for the select few capable of singling out a climax or a conclusion. Analyzing more advanced literature, on the other hand, is not such a remedial task, requiring deeper thinking and more analysis. Even a literary element as simple as the plot takes on a form very much different from that which it took in those elementary school classrooms. Kate Chopin’s “Desiree’s Baby,” however, through her masterful preservation of artistic unity, presents a much more advanced view of this once simple topic. Great writers implement artistic unity, or in other words, they exclude from a story all extraneous information. On this topic Perrine writes, “there should be nothing there for its own sake or its own excitement” …show more content…
As for Armand’s secret race history, there is plenty of foreshadowing present as well. Initially, when Armand accuses Desiree of not being white, she retaliates by stating that her own skin is much lighter than that of her husband, a fact which he quickly disregards. Chopin also discloses to the reader that Armand’s parents were french, but his mother stayed in her homeland, eventually dying there, having “loved her own land too well ever to leave it.” (Chopin 1). This detail appears unimportant, and is not emphasized in the text. However, for those observant enough, this seemingly extraneous detail is actually one of many carefully planned segments of a masterfully articulated short