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Story Of An Hour Literary Analysis

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“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.” This quote by Mark Twain says that if a person is ready for death will be prepared to die whenever the time come. Many suffering people wish for death to escape what is holding them back. A person who is faced with pain and restriction in their life may see death as a release or as a chance at freedom. In The Story Of An Hour by Kate Chopin, a death that results in release from restriction is shown in the main character Mrs. Mallard when her husband “dies”. For example, she feels a sense of freedom and starts chanting it over and over again. “When she abandoned herself a little whispered word escaped her slightly …show more content…

She finally felt free after her husband died, showing you can feel free if a death occurs. Another example is when she was thinking to herself about how even though she had loved him, she was finally free and finally had time to herself. “ And yet she had loved him - sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in the face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!” (Chopin) This quotation shows that while, yes she had loved him, she often didn’t and she finally could be alone and without a man to take care of her. She finally feels free and it’s all because Mr. Mallard is finally away from her. In a final example, when her “late” husband finally walks in through the door, she drops dead. It isn’t out of excitement or out of love, it’s because her only chance at freedom and alone time is taken from her just as soon as she received it. “Someone one was opening the front door with a latch key. It was Brently Mallard Mallard who entered, a little travel-stained, composedly carrying his grip-sack and

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Her life was now hers and hers alone to do with what she wished. She walked back down the stairs where her sister and her husband’s friend waited. They all turned at the sound of the front door opening. Who should walk in but Mr. Mallard, who was no where near the train wreck and did not even know about its occurring. Mrs. Mallard died of a heart attack from seeing her supposedly dead

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788 Words | 4 Pages

Through veiled and not really veiled hints, the story intimates that marriage is, in its tendency, persecuting, and that the death of one person can be the freedom of another. Chopin uncovers how Mrs. Mallard was not enjoying her marriage to the point that she was prepared to pass on as a method for getting out of the marriage. This in actuality uncovers that Mrs. Mallard regarded the institution of marriage a great deal. She dint imagine that divorce was an alternative. The main conceivable way out of the marriage would be through her death.

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616 Words | 3 Pages

The reader soon discovers, this feeling that comes to Mrs. Mallard is joy and relief, she feels this because she can now finally be her own person. Mrs. Mallard comes to the realization that her husband had been oppressing her for years, “There would be no powerful will bending..”, and she was finally free of that. Before the passing of her husband, Mrs. Mallard was scared of living a long life because of the treatment she received from him. After his passing she had a much different outlook, “There would be no one to live for her during those coming years; she would live for herself.” This shows that Mrs. Mallard was excited to now live her own life without being told what she was to do.

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307 Words | 2 Pages

Imagine waking up in the morning thinking it was a normal day, but by the end of the day, you’ll be dead. In “The Lottery,” a village is stuck in a malicious tradition where one person is killed at random each year. In “The Story of an Hour,” a woman unexpectedly dies, “of the joy that kill”(Chopin 3). In both “The Lottery,” and “The Story of an Hour,” the author uses foreshadowing to hint at death, but each author uses it in their own way.

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181 Words | 1 Pages

While reading “The Story of An Hour” by Kate Chopin. It’s a story that tells me about a lady name Mrs. Mallard who have heart trouble and gets bad news from her sister about Mrs. Mallard’s husband has been in a car accident. Her husband’s friend Richards look disturbance at a newspaper because it’s so sad and hard to believe it’s true about her husband death. Mrs. Mallard breaks down and cry into her sister arms, suddenly she gets up and enter a room alone. From “this state of mind” Mrs. Mallard heart is beating rapidly and she needs to sit down somewhere quiet by herself.

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940 Words | 4 Pages

In Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” demonstrates the personal growth of the dynamic protagonist Louise Mallard, after hearing news of her husband’s death. The third-person narrator telling the story uses deep insight into Mrs. Mallard’s thoughts and emotions as she sorts through her feelings after her sister informs her of her husband’s death. During a Character analysis of Louise Mallard, a reader will understand that the delicate Mrs. Mallard transforms her grief into excitement over her newly discovered freedom that leads to her death. As Mrs. Mallard sorts through her grief she realizes the importance of this freedom and the strength that she will be able to do it alone.

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1072 Words | 5 Pages

A Hidden Trap Kate Chopin’s short story, “The Story of an Hour”, was written in 1894 during the era of where a woman was suppose to depend on her husband for everything. Chopin gives the reader an unheard of view of marriage in her short story, by using symbolism to show how to some people, marriage can be like a trap or a role of servitude rather than a loving relationship. Chopin also uses irony at the of her short story when Mrs. Mallard dies, showing that death is not always a form of grief, but it can also be used to symbolize freedom and independence. Chopin starts her short story by introducing the reader to Mrs. Mallard’s heart troubles. Chopin uses symbolism to represent not only Mrs. Mallard’s physical heart condition but also

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704 Words | 3 Pages

In the short story, “The Story of an Hour,” Louise Mallard is given the news that there was a “railroad disaster” (Chopin 283), and her husband was the leading name on the “killed” list. Immediately she begins grieving over her deceased husband, weeping in her sister’s arms. In an instant she realizes that she is free from from her unhappy marriage saying, “...over and over under her breath: ‘free, free, free!’”

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1096 Words | 5 Pages

Chopin makes her strong statement in this quote from the story. Mrs. Mallard has no one to answer to but herself, and she feels liberated that her husband can no longer control her. During the late nineteenth century, women quite frequently had to suppress themselves to the will of their husbands, or to some other man who had a significant amount of control over their lives. Chopin successfully uses vivid imagery, point of view, and irony that gives a different view of marriage that is not typical of today.

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913 Words | 4 Pages

Chopin also describes Mrs. Mallard as “young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength”. At the beginning Mrs. Mallard is thought of as being controlled, and weak. In the 19th Century, when this story was written, husbands controlled their wives. Perhaps Mrs. Mallard wasn’t like most women of her time. After she hears of her husband’s death she morns for what feels like only a moment.

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304 Words | 2 Pages

Instead, she began to feel this sense of happiness and freedom. At the end of the story when she saw her husband was alive and she dies. In response to the story when she felt "physical exhaustion that haunted

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828 Words | 4 Pages

Mallard reaches a sense of exuberant liberation. She is overwhelmed with feelings of a newfound freedom. Chopin illustrates this burst of hope once again through nature imagery when she writes, “But she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air”(Chopin 237). Though Mrs. Mallard tries, she cannot fight the growing sense of freedom that overtakes her. Chopin writes this change as a powerful realization that Mrs. Mallard cannot help but accept.

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1141 Words | 5 Pages

Nonetheless, although the writer does not cite the contemporary situation of women in the story, the protagonist exclamations of ?free! Body and Soul!? are strongly suggestive of the historical context ("The Story of An Hour" 1). The writer depicts the sorrow of women in marriage and the feeling of oppression by men in marriage. The feeling of celebration and happiness in Mrs. Mallard, after learning the demise of her husband, demonstrates how women felt about marriage. The happiness of independence gained after becoming widowed outweighs the sadness of being left by their

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770 Words | 4 Pages

Kate Chopin introduces her main character as “Mrs. Mallard” to signify her being married. However, within her marriage, she loses herself. Being married, she took her husband’s last name and became a wife. In a way it changed her personality. She was no longer her own self, she was someone else’s “property”.

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1346 Words | 6 Pages

(Chopin, the Story of an Hour)” It would be prudent to believe by the way Mrs. Mallard was crying that indeed she was devastated about her husband’s tragic death.

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