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An Analysis of the Final Passage in Chopin’s The Awakening
As this passage commences, Chopin, through Edna’s thoughts, describes the seemingly endless sea that presents itself before her. Edna, through personification, shows the intimacy of her relationship with both nature and the sea. This large, “[…] never ceasing […]” (Chopin 139) body of water has entranced and enthralled Edna to the point where she is now beginning to see this natural element that amazes her so much as the only option left to her in life. Chopin reveals these intentions to the reader by describing the sea as “[…] inviting the soul to wander in the abyss of solitude” (Chopin 139). The word abyss in itself leaves the reader the impression of a mysterious place in which one might not return from; and it is later implied that Edna accepts this sensuous invitation from the sea.
In this final passage, Chopin seems to emphasize words describing the ecstacy of solitude that Edna encounters in her final visit to the sea. When Edna speaks of there being “[…] no living thing in sight” (Chopin 139) around her, her thoughts never stray to a memory of her past experiences, acquaintances, or even emotions. Even when Edna sees her bathing suit from the past summer, her thoughts remain fixated on solely the unending sea that lies before her.
Chopin also uses Enda’s encounter with her old bathing suit to show how distanced Edna is from her former life. Edna, seeing the garment, describes the former piece of clothing as being faded. As the color has fled from this garment, similarly has Edna’s soul fled from her former life. Edna originally begins to put the bathing suit on, however, the garment, seeming unpleasant to her skin, is almost immediately cast off. This garment, representing Edna’s former life, also shows how foreign Edna’s past life seems to her presently. Edna is so far removed from her former life, in fact, that the garment is shown as being physically irritating to her skin.
The imagery of the ocean at Grand Isle and its attributes symbolize a force calling her to confront her internal struggles, and find freedom. Chopin uses the imagery of the ocean to represent the innate force within her soul that is calling to her. "The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude; to lose itself in a maze of inward contemplation." (p.14) Through nature and its power, Edna, begins to find freedom in her soul and then returns to a life in the city where reside the conflicts that surround her. Edna grew up on a Mississippi plantation, where life was simple, happy, and peaceful. The images of nature, which serve as a symbol for freedom of the soul, appear when she speaks of this existence. In the novel, she remembers a simpler life when she was a child, engulfed in nature and free: "The hot wind beating in my face made me think - without any connection that I can trace - of a summer day in Kentucky, of a meadow that seemed as big as the ocean to the very little girl walking through the grass, which was higher than her waist.
Leonce Pontellier, the husband of Edna Pontellier in Kate Chopin's The Awakening, becomes very perturbed when his wife, in the period of a few months, suddenly drops all of her responsibilities. After she admits that she has "let things go," he angrily asks, "on account of what?" Edna is unable to provide a definite answer, and says, "Oh! I don't know. Let me along; you bother me" (108). The uncertainty she expresses springs out of the ambiguous nature of the transformation she has undergone. It is easy to read Edna's transformation in strictly negative terms‹as a move away from the repressive expectations of her husband and society‹or in strictly positive terms‹as a move toward the love and sensuality she finds at the summer beach resort of Grand Isle. While both of these moves exist in Edna's story, to focus on one aspect closes the reader off to the ambiguity that seems at the very center of Edna's awakening. Edna cannot define the nature of her awakening to her husband because it is not a single edged discovery; she comes to understand both what is not in her current situation and what is another situation. Furthermore, the sensuality that she has been awakened to is itself not merely the male or female sexuality she has been accustomed to before, but rather the sensuality that comes in the fusion of male and female. The most prominent symbol of the book‹the ocean that she finally gives herself up to‹embodies not one aspect of her awakening, but rather the multitude of contradictory meanings that she discovers. Only once the ambiguity of this central symbol is understood can we read the ending of the novel as a culmination and extension of the themes in the novel, and the novel regains a...
The irony of the story is the Edna learns how to swim ,yet she used the sea to take her own life. When the author states’ “But it was too late, the shore was far behind her, and her strength was gone. She looked into the distance, and the old terror flamed up for an instant then sank again”(135). In this quote the author ,Chopin, chose to show irony to end Edna’s character because Edna had faced her fears,and learned to swim and not fear the water. However ,the climax is also shocking for the readers because the author had shown Edna’s character as a strong women who had faced her fears and learned how to swim. By Edna killing herself the author shows us that Edna never changed and she is still that weak broken women who is trapped in life that she was so desperate to get out
The National Institute of Mental Health: Eating Disorders: Facts About Eating Disorders and the Search for Solutions. Pub No. 01-4901. Accessed Feb. 2002.
Another aspects of the story is that once Edna’s awakening begins to take place, she is on a roller coaster of emotions, from the manic exuberance of listening to music and the sounds of the water, her connection to robert--it’s as though all her senses are opened up. Between times, however, she is really depressed, as though all the color that Chopin imparts so beautifully in the descriptions of the other scenes, has become dull and uninteresting. Then, she is flung into an emotional upheaval when she reads Robert’s letter to Mlle Reisz, as the latter plays Wagner. Clearly, these kinds of emotions cannot be borne by a woman whose cultural structure does not admit the building of her own that it might sustain the weight and number. She is overwhelmed. She must escape, and she does, for her situation now is powerfully reminiscent of the “joy that kills” in “Hour.”
...ly must complete with the dominance of men. “In acknowledging her personal desires and dreams, Edna realizes that double standards exist for men and women” (Telgen and Hile 53). Ignorant of her “awakening” to come, Edna tests and defies every accepted value in women during the late 1800s including but not limited to obedience, fidelity, and compliance. Ultimately Edna succeeds in determining who she, reaching her full “awakening,” but discovers that the price for having her own identity in the restrictions of society is more than she can handle emotionally (53). Chopin provided insight for the future generations through the evidence of the effect of gender roles and the process of finding one’s self through their individual “awakening” in the midst of controversy and “as she swam she seemed to be reaching out for the unlimited in which to lose herself” (Chopin 49).
The main argument of this novel has been diluted though a too widened scope of Edna’s life. Throughout the novel Edna mentions countless flat characters that do not bring much to the Awakening that she is encountering. The wide variety of characters makes the novel very frustrating level of work. The audience can become confused with the different characters and the meaning Chopin holds behind each character. The Audience will them spend infinite time trying to incorporate meaning of the characters that they lose the overall journey that Edna is challenged with. While repeatedly reading this novel it became apparent to me that many of the characters could have been excluded from the novel to make the journey more objectified. The audience could still understand the object of this novel without Alcée Arobin, Madame Lebrun, Victor Lebrun, Mariequita, Dr. Mandelet, Mrs. James Highcamp and many others. All of these characters have little to no meaning that enhances the novel. For example, Alcée Arobin played a minor role as the second affair Edna was engaged in during her awakening. Without mentioning the affair between the two, there would still be circumstantial evidence that Edna is breaking free from society. She was already moved out of her husband’s home, abandoned all duties as a
What is there to attempt when the consciousness of an insuperable conundrum is surfaced to realization? This topic is considered in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening in which a young woman, Edna, recognizes the social constraint that men generally had on women as a married mother herself. Despite her identification, continued attempts for liberation only ended in inexorable defeat. In contrast, the perception of an ongoing dilemma can sometimes conclude in the ultimate goal: positive change. Examples akin to Martin Luther King Jr. in the attempt for racial justice and Abraham Lincoln for the abolishment of habitual slavery illustrate the possibility for success. Other times, this cognizance provides the comprehension that the hindrance
The setting Edna is in directly affects her temperament and awakening: Grand Isle provides her with a sense of freedom; New Orleans, restriction; the “pigeon house”, relief from social constraints. While at Grand Isle, Edna feels more freedom than she does at her conventional home in New Orleans. Instead of “Mrs. Pontellier… remaining in the drawing room the entire afternoon receiving visitors” (Chopin 84), Edna has the freedom to wander and spend time with Robert, rather than being restricted to staying at home while she is at Grand Isle. While sailing across the bay to the Cheniere Caminada, “Edna felt as if she were being borne away from some anchorage which had held her fast, whos chains had been looseining – had snapped the night before” (Chopin 58). The Cheniere Caminada at Grand Isle gives Edna an outlet from the social constraints she is under at home and at the cottage at Grand Isle. As Edna is sailing away she can feel the “anchorage” fall away: the social oppression, the gender roles, and the monotonous life all disappear; the same feeling and sense of awakening she gets when she sleeps for “one hundred years” (Chopin 63). New Orleans brings Edna back into reality – oppression, society, and depression clouds her mind as she is living a life she doesn’t want to live. New Orleans is the bastion of social rules, of realis...
Warbick, Caroline. Just the Facts: Eating Disorders. Reed Educational and Professional Publishing, Chicago, IL. 2003.
Yancey, Diane. Eating Disorders. Brookfield, Connecticut: Twenty-First Century Books A Division of The Millbrook Press, Inc., 1999.
Virtual Reality is a creation of a highly interactive computer based multimedia environment in which the user becomes a participant with the computer in a "virtually real" world. We are living in an era characterized by 3D virtual systems created by computer graphics. In the concept called Virtual Reality (VR), the virtual reality engineer is combining computer, video, image-processing, and sensor technologies so that a human can enter into and react with spaces generated by computer graphics.
... on, thinking of the bluegrass meadow...believing that it had no beginning and no end" (Chopin 190). It is there in the ocean that she first realizes her physical, mental, and emotional potential. It is only natural that the water, which has seduced her with its sound reclaims her.
Chopin repeats the image of the sea in order to symbolize that the sea acts as a figurative place that allows Enda to liberate herself from society. In her first awakening, Enda discovers her position within society, “She would not join the groups in their sports and bouts, but intoxicated with her newly conquered power, she swam out alone. She turned her face seaward to gather in an impression of space and solitude, which the vast expanse of water, metting and melting with the moonlit sky, conveyed to her excited fancy. As she swam she seemed to be reaching out for the unlimited in which to lose herself” (Chopin 48) Water is often associated with cleansing and baptism. As the sea serves as the setting for Edna’s suicide, it offers the promise and glory of independence as she defies against society. By constantly swimming in the sea, Edna is able to discover her strength and the pleasure
Bryant-Waugh, R. & Lask, B. (2004). Eating disorders: A parent’s guide (Rev. ed.). New York: Brunner-Routledge.