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Use of irony in heart of darkness
Use of irony in heart of darkness
Essays on irony in short stories
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In "The Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin, there are many moments when Chopin's craft of writing feeds the irony of the story. One perfect example, "assure himself of its truth by a second telegram" (772). This sentence subdued me into believing that Mrs. Mallard's husband was dead, when in fact, we learn that he never died. In addition, Mrs. Mallard is a woman with a strong sense of passion and detest. In the end, she dies by the nature of story. Chopin brings a style of writing that has irony. In the beginning of the story, Chopin's introduces you to the heart trouble that afflicts Mrs. Mallard. Her condition is significant later because this ailment drives the story. However, the notion of this heart condition can be overlooked as being meaningless. Many readers could argue that this heart condition foreshadowed the climax of the story instantaneously but it does not. In the end of the story, we realize the significance of her sickness. It was a clever way to secretly introduce the weakness that ends Mrs. Mallard's life. Another, well deceptive measure used by Chopin'...
In the short story “The story of an Hour”, the author, Kate Chopin, clearly communicates the story’s theme which is having a restricted amount of freedom. In other words, the theme is confinement. In order to develop and explain the theme, Chopin uses irony throughout the entire short story. When the speaker states, “She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance.” (REFERENCE) this indicated that Louise Mallard did not refuse the news of her husband’s death. On the contrary, she shed tears of joy because she was no longer stuck in a repressed relationship. Also, she started visualizing her new life full of freedom while confining herself in her bedroom. “The Story of an Hour” uses symbols, foreshadowing and irony to explore Mrs. Allard emotional hour after her husband’s death.
A very dull and boring story can be made into a great story simply by adding in something that is unexpected to happen. When the unexpected is used in literature it is known as irony. An author uses irony to shock the reader by adding a twist to the story. The author of “The Story of an Hour” is Kate Chopin. Her use of irony in the story is incredibly done more than once. Irony is thinking or believing some event will happen but in return the unexpected or opposite occurs. Kate Chopin uses two types of irony in this short story. Situational irony refers to the opposite of what is supposed to happen, and dramatic irony occurs when the audience or reader knows something that the rest of the characters in the story do not know. Kate Chopin does a great job in placing irony into this short story and makes the reader understand that the unexpected happens in life.
Kate also includes a mixture of tools such as narrative style, metaphors, and also thought provoking vocabulary that brings this story to life. Mrs. Mallard is described as having heart trouble (Chopin 123). One could argue that her ‘heart trouble’ wasn’t a physical condition, but more of a psychological and emotional condition transmitted from a horrible marriage. Kate Chopin also uses a large array of expressive words to bring to life the feelings that Mrs. Mallard is having about the death of her husband. Examples are seen throughout the text: “new spring life” “delicious breath of air” “blue sky showing through the clouds” “drinking in a very elixir of life” “summer days”. (Chopin 121-122). She too, uses the metaphor of an open window that she sits Mrs. Mallard in front of during the rise of the plot. Window is not just part of the setting, a window inside the mind and heat of the main character. It was her approach to a new excitement, new hopes, and new access to the coming years without Brently’s powerful controlling on her. Chopin has used all of these tools to her improvement to show the world a controversial look at a woman’s
In "The Story of an Hour" Kate Chopin tells the story of a woman, Mrs. Mallard, whose husband is thought to be dead. Throughout the story, Chopin describes the emotions Mrs. Mallard felt about the news of her husband's death. However, the strong emotions she felt were not despair or sadness, they were something else. In a way, she was relieved more than she was upset, and almost rejoiced in the thought of her husband no longer living. In using different literary elements throughout the story, Chopin conveys this to us on more than one occasion.
“Story of an Hour”, written by Kate Chopin presents a woman of the nineteenth century who is held back by societal constraints. The character, Louise Mallard, is left to believe that her husband has passed away. She quickly falls into a whirlwind of emotions as she sinks into her chair. Soon a sense of freedom overwhelms her body as she looks through the window of opportunity and times to come. She watches the world around her home run free as nature runs its course. Louise watches the blue sky as a rush of “monstrous joy” shoots through her veins (Chopin). She experiences a new sense of freedom. Although she sometimes loved her husband, his “death” breaks the chain that keeps her from experiencing a truly free life. Thoughts over times to
Irony can often be found in many literary works. “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin is masterfully written full of irony. The characters of the short story, Mrs. Mallard, Josephine, Richards, Mr. Brently Mallard, and the doctors all find their way into Chopin’s ironic twists. Chopin embodies various ironies in “The Story of an Hour” through representations of verbal irony, dramatic irony, and situational irony.
Freedom is one of the most powerful words in the world because of the feeling it gives people. This idea is evident in Kate Chopin’s, “The Story of an Hour.” In the story, readers witness the effect freedom can have when the main character, Louise, finds out her husband had passed away. The story begins when Louise’s sister informs her that her husband had been in a terrible accident and he was dead. Once she gets over the immediate shock, she finds herself overwhelmed with joy because she was free to live her life for herself and not her husband. At the end of the story, her husband walks through the front door, and Louise has a heart attack and dies. In the story "The Story of an Hour," Kate Chopin reveals the power of freedom through the use of diction, point of view, and setting.
Kate Chopin’s story, "The Story of an Hour," may seem to be about Mrs. Mallard’s unexpected and ironic reactions to the news of her husband’s untimely death due to a railroad disaster. At least that’s what I thought when I read the story. It seemed to me that she led a normal life with a normal marriage. She had a stable home life with a kind, loving husband who cared for her. She seemed to love him, sometimes. She had some kind of "heart trouble" (Chopin 25) that didn’t really affect her physically, until the very end. I thought Mrs. Mallard would have been saddened and filled with grief for an adequate period of time after her spouse died, but her grief passed quickly, and she embraced a new life that she seemed to be content with. Therefore I believe there is good evidence that Mrs. Mallard was an ungrateful woman who did not appreciate her husband or his love for her. That evidence is found in her selfish behavior after the death of her husband, Brently Mallard.
“When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease--of the joy that kills.” This is the most ironic and final line in Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin. Story of an Hour tells the story of Mrs. Mallard, a woman who recently found her husband died in a train accident, final hour alive. After hearing the news of her husband death, Mrs. Mallard goes to her bedroom to grieve, but realizes the freedom she now has from his death. This new found freedom is shortly lived when she finally realizes her husband is not actually dead. I am going to demonstrate the literary devices irony and symbolism is used in this story.
...Mallard’s death up to the reader’s own interpretation, but it seems that she is trying to secretly prove that women do not have to be dependent upon men. Chopin demonstrates throughout the literary work that women can possess joy without having a man by their side, which contradicts the beliefs of the 1800’s society. Chopin’s use of an ambiguous death and irony successfully create an entertaining story that courageously takes a stand for women’s freedom.
The use of irony is integral to the plot of "The Story of and Hour" by Kate Chopin. Situational irony is used to surprise the reader and add an interesting twist to Mrs. Mallard's discovery of her husband's death. Dramatic irony is used to give the reader insight into Mrs. Mallard's situation. The use of irony serves to make the story more interesting and the ending becomes a complete surprise to the reader.
Mallard through the acts of forbidden joy and the oppression of marriages contributes to the understanding of the work and the time that it was written. The story opens with the reader knowing that Mrs. Mallard was, “afflicted with heart trouble” (Chopin, 15), suggesting a more symbolic notion that she is ambivalent towards her marriage and expresses her unhappiness towards he lack of freedom. Mrs. Mallard ultimately throughout the story questions the meaning of love and rejects it as meaningless. It is arguable to say that Chopin was influenced by women’s roles and other writings at the time, which contributed to her understanding of the meaning of love and courtship. This understanding could be said that it was altered and became more dejected. When Mrs. Mallard dies in the end of the story, it is ironic that she was to die of “heart disease.” This particular death proves that Chopin’s claims of the loss of joy and the return to oppression would kill a woman in this time since independence was a right to be given through the death of their husbands. Another symbolic figure that Chopin uses is the use of the open window, which Mrs. Mallard sees, “blue sky showing here and there through the clouds” (Chopin, 15). The window is Mrs. Mallard’s salvation, ultimately concluding that Chopin doesn’t see any other way for women to be free of their prison during this time. This window acts as a barrier between life and death itself. Once Mrs. Mallard turns away
Mallard at the end of the story stands for the suffrage of women during this time to be free. She would rather die than lose her newfound freedom. Chopin’s biography before the story states “[t]he loss of her husband, however, led to her assuming responsibilities…Eventually devoting herself entirely to writing” (30). Her success was found only after she was free from her marriage; Chopin herself could have been hinting to the fact the she would have rather died than lose her own freedom. Chopin also uses the heart condition to kill Mrs. Mallard. She writes “the doctors…said she had died of a heart disease—of the joy that kills” (32). The metaphor of the heart condition standing for the weakness put on women returns with her husband. She is no longer strong and free; she is weak and trapped by her marriage. Chopin uses this purposely to show that women are weak in marriage and need to be set
Chopin describes her as a fragile woman. Because she was “afflicted with a heart trouble,” when she receives notification of her husband’s passing, “great care was taken” to break the news “as gently as possible” (1). Josephine, her sister, and Richards, her husband’s friend, expect her to be devastated over this news, and they fear that the depression could kill her because of her weak heart. Richards was “in the newspaper office when the intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with Brently Mallard’s name leading the list of killed” (1). He therefore is one of the first people to know about his death. Knowing about Mrs. Mallard’s heart, he realizes that they need to take caution in letting Mrs. Mallard know about it. Josephine told her because Richards feared “any less careful, less tender” person relaying the message to Louise Mallard (1). Because of her heart trouble, they think that if the message of her husband’s death is delivered to her the wrong way, her heart would not be able to withstand it. They also think that if someone practices caution in giving her the message, that, ...
Through our lives, we all go through regret, but it may be different for every individual person. In Regret, by Kate Chopin, the author uses metaphors, irony, and emotive language to illustrate that there are many things that we humans will regret doing in our lives. Mamzelle Aurelie’s life is portrayed as one with regrets as she wants to start a family. People should take the initiative in doing things because later we may regret not doing what we wanted to do.