Importance of Symbols
In all novels the use of symbols are what make the story feel so real to the reader. A symbol as simple as a bird can mean so much more then what you see. Whereas a symbol as complicated as the sea, can mean so much less then what you thought. It is a person perception that brings them to the true meaning of a specific symbol. Symbols are message within a word that must be analyzed to discover. In The Awakening, Kate Chopin conveys her ideas by using carefully crafted symbols that reflect her characters' thoughts and futures.
Early in the novel, while Edna attempts to escape from society's strong grasp, birds emphasize her entanglement by forecasting her actions and monitor her development by reflecting her feelings. The novel opens with the image of a bird, trapped and unable to communicate: "a green and yellow parrot, which hung in the cage outside the door...could speak a little Spanish, and also a language that nobody understood" (1). Like the bird, Edna feels trapped and believes that society has imprisoned her. Her marriage to Mr. Pontellier suffocates her and keeps her from being free. At the same time, she remains shut apart from society like the bird in the cage, and different ideas and feelings prevent her from communicating. The only person in society that begins to understand her, Robert, eventually decides that he must remain a member of society instead of staying with her. He says that "you [Edna] were not free; you were Leonce Pontellier's wife" and that "[Robert] was demented, dreaming of wild, impossible things...[such as] men who had set their wives free" (108). Robert does not want to do
something wild and unacceptable to society. In a situation parallel to that of Edna's, the only bird that understands the parrot is the mockingbird (Reisz) that "[is] whistling its fluty notes upon the breeze with maddening persistence" (1). Because the parrot continues to shriek, people move it away from their society: "[Mr. Farvial] insisted upon having the bird removed and consigned to regions of darkness" (23).
Society wants to hide the bird in darkness, as it wants to do to Edna, in order to keep the bird from causing problems.
Later, when Mademoiselle Reisz tells Edna that "the bird that would soar above the level plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings," she uses birds to forecast Edna's future an...
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...ean, naked, returning to the innocence of her childhood. " She felt like some new-born creature" (189). As Edna swims on to her freedom, "She did not look back?but went on and on, thinking of the bluegrass meadow?believing that it had no beginning and no end" (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.
Edna Pontellier has always abided by social expectations and lived for everyone but herself. In order for her to gain her independence and escape from her trapped state in society she must put all that she has ever known behind her. This last scene symbolizes Edna giving up her life for her freedom. She goes back to where she first got some independence(the sea) and breaks through the cage that held her prison and dies, living solely for herself. Though see lost her life she finally got out of the world see dreaded living in so much. Without symbols a story would be a group of words placed in a sequential, yet pointless order. There would be no such thing of reading for pleasure, for the fact our minds would feel useless without symbols.
The birds are the major symbolic images from the very beginning of the novel: "A green and yellow parrot, which hung in a cage outside the door, kept repeating over and over: `Allez vous-en! Allez vous-en! Sapristi! That's all right!'" (Chopin pp3) In The Awakening, caged birds represent Edna's entrapment. She is caged as a wife and mother; she is never expected to actually be able to think and make decisions for herself. The caged birds also symbolize the entrapment of Victorian women in general since their movements are limited by the rules of the society that they live in. Just like Edna the parrot cannot communicate its feelings because the parrot speaks in "a language which nobody [understands]" (Chopin pp3). Edna’s feelings are incomprehensible to the members of Creole society. Chopin uses wild birds and the idea of flight to symbolize freedom. Edna experiences a vision while Mademoiselle Reisz is playing piano and this vision includes the wild birds and flight. "When she heard it there came before her imagination the figure of a man standing beside a desolate rock on the seashore. He was naked. His attitude was one of hopeless resignation as he looked toward a distant bird winging its flight away from him." (Chopin pp26-27) Here Edna is showing her intense desire for freedom, a desire to escape from her roles as a wife and mother, and also from her husband Léonce. Léonce oppresses Edna by restricting her to a social cage. Edna thus begins to express her desire for complete independence through her move to the pigeon house "because it's so small and looks like a pige...
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.
The tile of the poem “Bird” is simple and leads the reader smoothly into the body of the poem, which is contained in a single stanza of twenty lines. Laux immediately begins to describe a red-breasted bird trying to break into her home. She writes, “She tests a low branch, violet blossoms/swaying beside her” and it is interesting to note that Laux refers to the bird as being female (Laux 212). This is the first clue that the bird is a symbol for someone, or a group of people (women). The use of a bird in poetry often signifies freedom, and Laux’s use of the female bird implies female freedom and independence. She follows with an interesting image of the bird’s “beak and breast/held back, claws raking at the pan” and this conjures a mental picture of a bird who is flying not head first into a window, but almost holding herself back even as she flies forward (Laux 212). This makes the bird seem stubborn, and follows with the theme of the independent female.
“A feeling of exultation overtook her, as if some power of significant import had been given her to control the working of her body and her soul” implies the tremendous joy that encourages her to shout, as well as underscores the significance of the experience in terms of the greater awakening, for the experience actually does provide Edna with the ability to control her own body and soul for the first time. Her “daring and reckless” behavior, her overestimation of strength, and the desire to “swim far out, where no woman had swum before” all suggest the tragic conclusion that awaits Edna. Whether her awakening leads her to want too much, or her desires are not fully compatible with the society in which she lives, she goes too far in her awakening. Amazed at the ease of her new power, she specifically does not join the other groups of people in the water, but rather goes off to swim alone. Indeed, her own awakening ultimately ends up being solitary, particularly in her refusals to join in social expectations. Here, the water presents her with space and solitude, with the “unlimited in which to lose herself.
These roles comprised, but not limited to, being the faultless communal entertainer, prodigious wife and affectionate mother all at the same time. These expectations that were imposed on her confined Edna, and after refusing to follow the “rules” she packed up and moved to her own house. The “Pigeon House” was nicknamed by Edna because these roles that she was obligatory to abide by, and ultimately after moving numerous times and never feeling that she was “at home”. Edna ended up taking her own life, and that is the only place where she can find respite, ease and discretion.
The first words of the book convey a parrot that spoke “a language which nobody understood”, and Edna’s husband “had the privilege of quitting [the parrot] when [it] ceased to be entertaining” (11). In the same light, Edna speaks of and wishes for a life that nobody apprehends. Her husband also possesses the moral, objectifying liberty to quiet Edna when she did not provide leisure, as one can turn off a song once it grows into a tedious nuisance. A further exemplification comes about when Old Monsieur Farival, a man, “insisted upon having [a] bird. . . consigned to regions of darkness” due to its shrieking outside (42). As a repercussion, the parrot “offered no more interruption to the entertainment” (42). The recurrence of the parrot evolves Edna’s state of stagnance as a consequence of being put to a halt by others despite her endeavor of breaking free. Ultimately, as Edna edges out towards the water to her death, a bird is depicted with “a broken wing” and is “beating the air above, reeling, fluttering, circling disabled down, down to the water” (159). This recurrence parallels the beaten bird to a suffering Edna. She has “despondency [that] came upon her there in the wakeful night” that never alleviates (159). Dejection is put to action when Edna wanders out into the water, “the shore. . . far behind her” (159). Motif of birds articulates her suicide by its association with
In their analytical papers on The Awakening by Kate Chopin, both Elaine Showalter and Elizabeth Le Blanc speak to the importance of homosocial relationship to Edna’s awakenings. They also share the viewpoint that Edna’s return to the sea in the final scene of the book represents Edna being one with her female lover and finding the fulfillment she has been seeking. We see evidence of this idea of the sea as a feminine from Showalter when she tells us that “As the female body is prone to wetness, blood, milk, tears and amniotic fluid, so in drowning the woman is immersed in feminine organic element. Drowning thus becomes the traditionally feminine literary death”. (Showalter 219) LeBlanc takes this idea even further. She tells us that “The sea is Edna’s metaphorical lesbian lover—her only source of fulfillment equal to her longing.” Edna “overcomes her fear of water and unites with her “lover” for the first time”. (LeBlanc 251) In these statements Showalter and LeBlanc guide us to a glimpse of why Edna chose to end her life in the sea; she could find no fulfillment within the constraints of a patriarchal society; she could only find them in the arms of the sea.
The mockingbirds in the story symbolize peace and innocence because they don’t do anything wrong and they only bring joy to people. “‘But remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird [said by Atticus]’....’Your father's right,’ she [Miss Maudie] said. ‘Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy” (Lee, 119). The title also has meaning in it, since mockingbirds represent innocence, to kill a mockingbird means to destroy innocence. Some of the characters in the story can be represented as mockingbirds, or innocent people destroyed by evil things. One of the major mockingbirds in the story, Tom Robinson, who was killed by the police, was an innocent man who was destroyed by the evil of the Ewell’s. “‘Tom’s dead.” [said by Atticus]. Aunt Alexandra put her hands on her mouth. ‘They shot him,’ said Atticus. ‘He was running. It was during their exercise period’ (Lee, 315). Tom had the misfortune of knowing the Ewell’s, it was because of Mayella and Bob’s lies that he died. “Tom was a dead man the minute Mayella Ewell opened her mouth and screamed” (Lee, 323). There are other mockingbirds in the story too, such as Jem and Boo Radley. Jem’s innocence was destroyed during Tom Robinson’s trial, where he sees Tom undergo an unfair trial. Since the trial took place in the deep South in the 1930’s, what a white man says is held higher than what a black man says, even when it’s not true. "The jury couldn't
Chopin mentions birds in a subtle way at many points in the plot and if looked at closely enough they are always linked back to Edna and her journey of her awakening. In the first pages of the novella, Chopin reveals Madame Lebrun's "green and yellow parrot, which hung in a cage" (Chopin 1). The caged bird at the beginning of the novella points out Edna's subconscious feeling of being entrapped as a woman in the ideal of a mother-woman in Creole society. The parrot "could speak a little Spanish, and also a language which nobody understood" (1). The parrot's lack of a way to communicate because of the unknown language depicts Edna's inability to speak her true feelings and thoughts. It is for this reason that nobody understands her and what she is going through. A little further into the story, Madame Reisz plays a ballad on the piano. The name of which "was something else, but [Edna] called it Solitude.' When she heard it there came before her imagination the figure of a man standing on a desolate rock on the seashore His attitude was one of hopeless resignation as he looked toward a distant bird winging its flight away from him" (25). The bird in the distance symbolizes Edna's desire of freedom and the man in the vision shows the longing for the freedom that is so far out of reach. At the end of the story, Chopin shows "a bird with a broken wing beating the air above, reeling, fluttering, circling disabled down, down to the water" while Edna is swimming in the ocean at the Grand Isle shortly before she drowns (115). The bird stands for the inability to stray from the norms of society and become independent without inevitably falling from being incapable of doing everything by herself. The different birds all have different meanings for Edna but they all show the progression of her awakening.
... the novel. Ranging from clothes, to birds, to the “pigeon house”, each symbol and setting provides the reader with insight into Edna’s personality, thoughts, and awakening.
Smith, Gene. "Lost Bird." American Heritage 47.2 (1996): 38. MAS Ultra - School Edition. EBSCO. Web. 6 Apr. 2015.
Madame Reisz that in order to fly away and escape, she must have strong wings.
Throughout the story the ocean represented Edna's constant struggle for self-realization and independence. From her first flow of emotion on the beach to her last breath of life in the sea, the ocean beckons her. The voice of the sea lures her onward in her journey toward liberation and empowerment.
It serves as the underlying force in her experience, both at the beginning and all throughout. When she first learns to swim it is a result of Robert recommending a plunge (51) and having given her many lessons (52), and he is there with her after her moment of triumph, playing the dutiful friend (54). When he announces plans to leave she is devastated by the bewildering news (79), and for much of the remainder of the novel desperately seeks any news she can catch of him, inquiring of Robert’s mother, Mademoiselle Reisz (whom Robert writes on occasion; 119), and even her own husband (90). Near the end of the novel Edna confesses her love to him and admits to this, saying “I love you, only you, no one but you. It was you who awoke me last summer out of a lifelong stupid dream” (207). And it is this, alas, which brings both her awakening and her very life to an end. Robert returns from Mexico and is on the cusp of acquiescing to her sensuous entreaties to be her man, but experiences a change of heart and refuses to commit adultery with her, telling her that his love for her forbids it (215). It is at this moment, when the final consummation of happiness seems at hand and is then irrevocably thwarted, that her endeavor for independence and being true to herself comes to an end. Having attempted to live by her own desires and dictates, and to achieve happiness with Robert,
An image of a green and yellow parrot in a cage occurs throughout The Awakening; the parrot represents how Edna Pontellier is trapped in her marriage to Leonce Pontellier. During that time period women were expected to stay at home and perform household duties, take care of their husbands, and take care of their children; women were not supposed to be educated and did not hold a career. Edna realizes she does not want to perform the expected duties of a woman because she is not happy just being a wife and mother. In the beginning of ...