Reflection On The Story Of An Hour

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Coming to the end of this class I have learned a lot about what it takes to make a piece of literature leave you feeling a certain way. A lot goes into setting up a atmosphere in a story because you are not really seeing it in front of your face so you must imagine it. The author wants you to imagine a certain scene and feel a certain way through their words and descriptions. An important component to making a reader understand the atmosphere and visualize the scene is by the setting. Setting is where a specific event is taking place. Without setting it would be hard for a reader to not only visualize but to even understand the theme, tone and the atmosphere. Throughout this semester we learned this from genres such as short story, poems and …show more content…

With that being said, it is even more important to get the theme across and the atmosphere along with the tone of the story in such a short amount of time. In the short story unit, I came across a short story by Kate Chopin called The Story of an Hour (Chopin 236). This story is about how a women finds out that her husband has been killed in an accident and the author leads us to believe that she is so heartbroken that her own heart gives way and she dies. But in the reality of it I believe she died of not only the death of her husband but because of the excitement of finally being free of her husband. A large sum of the story is spent describing the setting of the story. For example after she was informed of her husbands passing the author says, “ There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into this she sank, pressed down by physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach her soul” (Chopin 236). This passage makes the reader feel as if the women is extremely shocked and very hurt by the passing of her husband, the way the setting is describes set the tone as a sad one and the atmosphere is as-well. The setting shows the theme that the women is very emotional over her husbands death, wether you as the reader believe it be excited emotions or depressed ones, they are still overwhelming emotions that …show more content…

We were assigned to read the novel, The Bluest Eye written by Toni Morrison and with all of the plots going on in the novel, the setting really helped you identify the major themes, tones and atmosphere. A major theme in this novel was beauty, the idea of what beauty really looked and the what it takes for someone to love you was always something that came up. The main character Pecola often found people calling her ugly and thinking that if she had blue eyes she would be considered pretty for once in her life. Through the setting I was able to have a more well-rounded understanding on the theme and even the tone and atmosphere. One scene in the novel stuck out to me because the setting in which it took place showed the tone atmosphere and theme. Pecola and the two other sisters she was staying with were all ready to go to sleep crammed in one bed because they weren 't the most wealthy people. This setting just shows that they are not wealthy and live below average since 3 people have to share not only a room but the same bed. This made the atmosphere of the whole story very sad because you know they don 't have much. Pecola and the girls have a discussion before bed that goes like, “Is it true that I can have a baby now?” “Sure” “But how?” “Somebody has to love you.” “How do you do that? I mean, how do you

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