English Composition

English Composition Study Guide of 84 "Louise, open the door! I beg; open the door--you will make yourself ill. What are you doing, Louise? For heaven's sake open the door." "Go away. I am not making myself ill." No; she was drinking in a very elixir of life through that open window. Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her. Spring days, and summer days, and all sorts of days that would be her own. She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long. She arose at length and opened the door to her sister's importunities. There was a feverish triumph in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory. She clasped her sister's waist, and together they descended the stairs. Richards stood waiting for them at the bottom. Some one was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard who entered, a little travel-stained, composedly carrying his grip-sack and umbrella. He had been far from the scene of the accident, and did not even know there had been one. He stood amazed at Josephine's piercing cry; at Richards' quick motion to screen him from the view of his wife. When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease--of the joy that kills. Strong Response Example: Learning of the death of a spouse, especially one that results from an unexpected accident, is usually a traumatic experience. The surviving spouse feels overwhelmed with grief, worried how life will ever be bearable without the one he or she cherished most. Yet this fear of the future and sadness of being alone isn’t one that is experienced by everyone learning their spouse has suddenly died, including Louise Mallard of Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour.” In this short story Chopin uses symbolism and irony to explore themes of freedom and marriage as her protagonist reacts to the news of her husband’s recent death. One of the most powerful literary devices used to develop themes of freedom and independence in Chopin’s short story is symbolism. As Louise Mallard retreats to her room in solitude to digest the news of her husband’s unexpected death in a train accident, she sits gazing out an open window. At first she struggles to identify the feeling that seems to be taking over her. She is sad and sobbing intermittently over her husband whose “face had never looked save with love upon her.” Yet there is something else “coming to her…it was too subtle and elusive to name.” As she sits staring out the open window, readers realize with Louise that the nameless feeling is joy at her new freedom from her married life. The open window symbolizes a new opportunity for her, and this is further explored as she watches through the window as the world seems renewed. She sees “trees that were all aquiver with the new spring of life,” smells “the delicious breath of rain [that] was in the air,” and watches as “patches of blue sky” emerge. Not only does the window symbolize her new freedom, but the trees with new growth, the rain that has washed away the past, and the skies that clear and begin to show hopeful patches of blue all further represent the new hope Louise has now that her husband ©2018 Achieve Page 65