The Awakening Rhetorical Analysis

“You can love someone so much...but you can never love someone as much as you can miss them” said American author John Green. In Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, the reader is taken on an emotional journey as she recounts the self-realization of Edna, a young woman who has suddenly been left by her husband; forcing her to become independant. Chopin uses striking imagery, onomatopoeias, and changes of rhythm to exposes how solitude is a consequence of independence; so intense that it drives people to recognize suicide as their only escape. The first paragraph plays an imperative role in the excerpt, for it immerses the reader in emotion as she describes Edna’s past. Chopin sets the mood from the beginning, for she states that “despondency had

Chopin invites the reader to envision the alluring water of the Gulf, which is accentuated by a hyperbole that expresses its radiant effect, as it reflects the million lights of the sun. This evokes feelings of freedom and hope within the reader as Edna realizes that she no longer requires Robert to be happy; therefore establishing the beach as a symbol of hope. She invigorates this belief by describing how “the voice of the sea is seductive, never ceasing, whispering, clamouring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander in abysses of solitude” (lines 11-13). When the reader denotes this line, it creates a peaceful mood, for they imagine the radiant sea’s captivating sounds. Although, when they connote this line, they recognize that Chopin uses the sea to symbolizes solitude, and its captivating sounds are alluring her into its abyss. Therefore, Chopin cleverly juxtaposes the beach and the ocean together, exposing that when Edna begins to feel more hopeful about her newfound independence, the solitude becomes harder to ignore; pulling her back into its hopeless abyss. Following these lines, Chopin forces the reader to imagine a macabre scene of “a bird with a broken wing...beating the air above, reeling, fluttering, circling disabled down, down to the water” (lines 14-15). Chopin enriches this line with countless caesuras, provoking the reader to imagine this as a motion picture. She cleverly employs a bird within this line because they symbolize freedom and independence, for they can go anywhere without boundaries. However, in this line she illustrates how this independent creature is disabled by the solitude, hopeless of escape as it circles down, down to its abyss; therefore solidifying that solitude is a consequence of independence, which