The Japanese Quince

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An Hour of The Japanese Quince Kate Chopin’s Story of an Hour depicts a story of a woman dying because her husband turned out to be alive after a railroad accident. John Galsworthy’s Japanese Quince explains the story of a man who meets the splitting image of himself and refuses to become friends with him. At first glance, these two stories have no kind of relation to each other whatsoever. However, there is a lot more in common between these two stories than one might think. The similar but completely contrasted use of themes, symbols, and messages ends up creating a much deeper relation between the two short stories. The biggest contrast between The Story of An Hour and The Japanese Quince is the main idea of each short story. Hour’s message …show more content…

One such is the descent motif, where Mrs. Mallard would walk the stairs to be reunited with her husband and die in the process, while Mr. Nilson would descend into his one chance to make a friend, however decides to ascend back up into his house. Both stories also use the season of Spring and sunlight as the setting of the novel, and spring could be seen as new life or revelation. Both uses of spring are ironic with Mr.Nilson rejecting his new opportunity, while Mrs. Mallard straight up dies in a season of birth and life. Both the stories use lines such as, “She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all quiver with the new spring life”, (Chopin 4) and, “But he could detect nothing except a faint lemony scent, rather agreeable than otherwise, which evidently emanated from the bushes budding in the sunshine” (Galsworthy 1) which both convey a sense of beauty and spring life, contrasted with the inner turmoil of both the main characters. Chopin and Galsworthy also use character names to also convey their point. Chopin uses the names Louise and Josephine to convey the sort of masculine sense since those names are feminized versions of male names. Galsworthy on the other hand uses the names with deeper meaning such as Nilson could be related to the word nil which means empty or zero, and Tandram which could