Elements of Setting in Kate Chopin's Short Story, "The Story of an Hour"
Setting exists in every form of fiction, representing elements of time, place, and social context throughout the work. These elements can create particular moods, character qualities, or features of theme. Throughout Kate Chopin's short story "The Story of an Hour," differing amounts and types of the setting are revealed as the plot develops. This story deals with a young woman's emotional state as she discovers her own independence in her husband's death, then her "tragic" discovery that he is actually alive. The constituents of setting reveal certain characteristics about the main character, Louise Mallard, and are functionally important to the story structure. The entire action takes place in the springtime of a year in the 1890s, in the timeframe of about an hour, in a house belonging to the Mallards. All of these aspects of setting become extremely relevant and significant as the meaning of the story unfolds.
When Louise Mallard first hears that her husband was killed in a railroad accident, "she wept at once," and "went away to her room alone" (12). As she mourns, looking out of her window on the second floor of her home, a sudden change of heart begins to come over her. She notices "the delicious breath of rain," " a peddler . . . crying his wares," "notes of a distant song," "countless sparrows . . . twittering," and "patches of blue sky," "all aquiver with the new spring life" (13). As she stares at the sky, she begins to think about her newfound independence from her husband, uttering the words "free, free, free!" (13). What makes her develop such a sudden change in attitude? Could it be that she sees rebirth in the world through her wind...
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...giving it boundaries and distinctive characteristics about the situation. Setting preys upon reader stereotypes and preconceptions about the certain time frame or location in which the story takes place in order to bring out more meaning. In this work, Chopin develops the story based on the reader's knowledge and understanding of a woman's place in late nineteenth-century America. But the specific setting--the time of year and the structure of the Mallard house--also gives clues to help readers understand Louise and attempt to determine the cause of her death. Louise may die of heart disease, as the doctors say at the end of the story, but setting indicates that the disease was not "joy that kills" (14).
Work Cited
Chopin, Kate. "The Story of an Hour." The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature. 4th ed. Ed. Michael Meyer. Boston: St. Martins, 1997. 12-15.
In arguing against cloning, the central debate is derived from the fact that this unnatural process is simply unethical. The alleged
Throughout the story Chopin uses many ironic instances and symbols to illustrate the meaning of several major aspects of the story, we learn a lot more of the main character Mrs. Mallard and we come to an understanding that she did not recognize a world outside of herself.
"The Story of an Hour, Kate Chopin, Characters, Setting." Kate Chopin: The Awakening, The Storm, Stories, Biography. The Kate Chopin International Society, 1 Nov. 2010. Web. 13 Dec. 2010. .
Broadway, Bill. "A RUSH TO JUDGMENT ON HUMAN CLONING? - U-VA. SCHOLAR WARNS NOT ENOUGH IS KNOWN TO BAN PROCEDURE PERMANENTLY." NewsBank. 7 Feb. 1998. Web. 29 Oct. 2011.
Cloning humans has recently become a possibility. It is achieved by the production of a group of identical cells or organisms that all derive from a single individual (Grolier 220). It is not known when cloning humans really became a possibility, but it is known that there are two possible ways that we can clone humans. The first way involves splitting an embryo into several halves and creating many new individuals from that embryo. The second method of cloning a human involves taking cells from an already existing human being and cloning them, in turn creating other individuals that are identical to that particular person. With these two methods almost at our fingertips, we must ask ourselves two very important questions: Can we do this, and should we? There is no doubt that many problems involving the technological and ethical sides of this issue will arise and will be virtually impossible to avoid, but the overall idea of cloning humans is one that we should accept as a possible reality for the future. Cloning humans is an idea that has always been thought of as something that could be found in science fiction novels, but never as a concept that society could actually experience. "It is much in the news. The public has been bombarded with newspaper articles, magazine stories, books, television shows, and movies as well as cartoons¡¨, writes Robert McKinnell, the author of Cloning: A Biologist Reports (24). Much of this information in these sources leads the public in the wrong direction and makes them wonder how easy it would be for everyone around them to be cloned. Bizarre ideas about cloning lie in many science fiction books and scare the public with their unbelievable possibilities. David Rorvik wrote a highly controversial book entitled In His Image. In it he describes the story of a wealthy man who decides to clone himself. He is successful in doing this and causes quite an uprise in his community. This book was written in the late seventies and even then, societies reaction to the issues of human cloning was generally a negative one. We face a problem today even greater than the one in this book and it involves the duplication of human beings in a society that has always been known for its diversity. The main issue as to whether or not human cloning is possible through the splitting of embryos began in 1993 when experimentation was done at George W...
Kate Chopin made use of every aspect of setting in "The Story of an Hour." Her use of setting permitted the reader to piece together an entire life story of the characters from a two page short story using his own interpretation of the veiled hints she left through description. Each of the different elements of setting, including time, location, social context, and environment, convey all the information that Ms. Chopin chose not to explicitly write. Analyzation of each element leads to a clearer picture of Mrs. Mallard's circumstances and actions, and a fuller understanding of the story itself.
Cloning, a topic that has recently caused mayhem all over the world, is possible, but will it be here to stay? The astonishing news that scientists had cloned a sheep a couple of years ago sent people into panic at the thought that humans might be next. "Cloning is a radical challenge to the most fundamental laws of biology, so it's not unreasonable to be concerned that it might threaten human society and dignity" (Macklin 64). Since most of the opposition is coming from the pure disgust of actually being able to clone species, it makes it difficult for people to get away from the emotional side of the issue and analyze the major implications cloning would have for society. To better understand this controversial issue, the pros and cons of cloning will be discussed.
Cloning is a process that creates exact genetic copies of an existing cell.Cloning is a more general term that describes a number of different processes that can be used to produce genetically identical copies. The process of cloning can happen either naturally, for instance, when identical twins develop or it can be induced through synthetic conditions in a laboratory. There are three different types of artificial cloning: gene cloning, reproductive cloning and therapeutic cloning.
Chopin, Kate. "The Story of an Hour." Introduction to Literature: Reading, Analyzing, and Writing.2nd ed.
In the story of an hour, Kate Chopin uses many literary devices. Imagery, irony and symbolism makes the story interesting and the ending of the story raises many question came to my mind? How can such an event take so little time? What is the significant of that one hour? What does her heart trouble symbolize?
The idea of the possibility of cloning has long interested scientists from all over the world. The ability to create another life without the need to reproduce, simply a petri dish and some cells, is something that has been attempted to be done for decades. There are endless possibilities of the uses that cloning could bring, and it excites many and equally terrifies others. In was in 1997 when there was a big breakthrough of cloning occurred: the “birth” of Dolly the ewe. Dolly was cloned from an adult sheep in Scotland. Dolly was the beginning of the experimentation of cloning full mammals. We now clone many mice and claves all cloned from adult cells that still now fascinate many scientists. However, the idea of cloning and cloning has been done before; however, now that a full mammal that was cloned from an adult cell was successful, it triggered the idea of possibly cloning a full human. There were many experiments done with the idea of cloning and the questioning of the replication process when cells divide; experiments were done as early as 1888. They began with the experimentation on a two-cell amphibian embryo and discovered certain genes that were lost during the replication of the cell. From there the experimentations grew more and more sophisticated and these early nuclear cloning experiments confirmed that “the complete genome is replicated during cell division, at least during early cleavage” (McKinnell, 1999). These experiments were the bases of modern cloning experiments to study the genomic ability of the adult embryonic cells. The studies and experimentation of cloning is being done all over the world: the U.S, England, France, China, and Japan are all in the field of cloning and the possibilities that it ca...
Works Cited for: Chopin, Kate. “The Story of an Hour.” Literature and Its Writers. An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, and Drama.
Chopin, Kate. “The Story of an Hour.” Heritage of American Literature. Ed. James E. Miller. Vol 2. Austin: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1991.487.Print.
Chopin, Kate. “The Story of an Hour.” Backpack Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. Eds. X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. 3rd ed. New York: Pearson, 2010. 261-263. Print.
Cloning in today’s modern society has evolved into a very sophisticated practice of making identical copies of an organism. Scientists are able to clone different animals and plants exceptionally better than they were years ago, which leads many to wonder if humans will be next. Cloning has tremendous medical and economic pros; however, the morality of cloning does raise many conflicts on whether or not it should be performed throughout the world.