Figurative Language In Kate Chopin's The Story Of An Hour

Cody Palladino

Professor Regis

English 113

March 8 2016

Literary analysis essay

In the short story “The Story of an Hour,” by Kate Chopin she does an exquisite job using structural and stylistic techniques to enhance the drama in the hour. The tone, theme, and use of figurative language such as irony and symbolism is what sets this short story apart from others and make it extremely powerful. The author presents an almost never heard view of marriage. Chopin main character Mrs. Louise Mallard is faced with an unprecedented event finding out her husband, Brently Mallard was tragically killed working on the rail roads. Although she morons and griefs and spends time crying in her room she experience a rush of freedom rather then loneliness. Soon

Mallard would not come out of her room she was sitting in a couch looking out the window. The narrator say she was “drinking in a very elixir of life through that open window” (18). She could see spring days, summer, winter, and fall days all to her own (19). The story also say that when she was look out the window the season was spring and all the trees and plants had new life growing upon it and were beautiful to Mrs. Mallard to think of what life is going to be. When she was in the room Josephine was trying to get in telling Louise “open the door—you will make yourself ill, for heaven’s sake open the door” (17). Right before Mrs. Mallard came out of the room is says, “She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long” (19). Due to all time in the past she wanted her life and the pain with living to be over. She opened the door and Josephine could see a “Feverish triumph in her eye” (20). The front door opens and in walks Mr. Mallard, Louise fall onto her sisters waist and they both fall down the stairs. Brently and Richard watch the Josephine get up but Mrs. Mallard does not she is dead. She died when she saw her husband because she knows not she has nothing to live for. All of her freedom she had just gained she has now lost. Too much for her to handle she dropped dead. Mrs. Mallard was supposed to live her life with freedom and the husband was supposed to be dead, but now it is flipped she has died and the Mr. Mallard is still