“Devils Trill”
Before the Spring Festival of 1973 the narrator’s mother brought him his violin; it was a fine German model. The narrator received the violin from his great uncle who bought it from a poor Russian musician for fifty silver dollars. His uncle was on his deathbed when he gave the violin to the narrator, and gave it to him because none of his sons our grandsons played the violin. The narrator aspired to be a musician for much of his young life; he attended a music school, but later abandoned the dream. The narrator is now in a camp for political prisoners, recently one of the prisoners was executed, and many prisoners were scared they were going to be killed. The narrator was made a prisoner of a fellow prisoner named Old Cop, and the narrator could not stand him. Even though he did not like him, the narrator tried to be on good terms with the Old Cop, but he just ignored him. On the eve of the Spring festival the narrator was playing his violin on his bed and a fellow prisoner was trying to hide cakes his wife had brought him. After a while a crowd of inmates were gathered abound his bunk listening to him play the violin. The Old Cop was annoyed when The Big Boss of the barracks came over to listen to the narrator play so he told the narrator to go outside. As he as going outside to the courtyard he started to recall past spring festivals before he was a prisoner, and how he learned to play the violin. He then entered the bathroom and saw a couple of his friends and started play the violin for them. They were very pleased. Later that night he went to the Big Boss’s barracks, and they talked about the Big Boss’s upcoming release, and how he was arrested. When the narrator returned to his barracks, he witnessed the Old Cop trying to steal the one of the inmate’s cakes and started to fight with him. He eventually won the fight and was rewarded by one of the officers. He was to be one of the waiters at the festival, a job that the Old Cop would have had. The narrator was excited to receive the job because he would be able to hear rumors from the outside world. When they got to the festival they were to help the butcher slay another pig because there were more people coming than expected.
Back in 1990, a man named Gary Soto decided to write an autobiography about himself, titled A Summer Life. One of the more interesting portions of the book was when Mr. Soto described a summer day back when he was six years old. On that day, young Gary found out what it felt like to be a true sinner, as he stole an apple pie from the local bakery. Some readers found this as one of the more interesting parts, not because of the plot, but because of the literary devices used, such as detail, imagery, and pacing. The three aforementioned literary devices are almost a backbone to the story, because without those three, the story would be shortened and fairly bland. The following three paragraphs will each describe a literary devices used by Mr. Soto to enhance the quality of his story.
I can still recall how the book smelled; it wasn’t the crisp sweetness of a new book, it was more of an oddly reassuring, “I’ve been around the world,” smell. A page or two at a time was enough for a six-year-old girl to fall more and more in love with the enchanting story. Comparable to Daniel Felsenfeld’s experience in “Rebel Music,” the connection was instantaneous. From the moment the Beethoven song began, Felsenfeld was awestruck, as if the music was fashioned for his ears only. After finding himself a bit lost in his mid-teens, Felsenfeld was introduced to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony by happenstance. This introduction led him to fall in love with many other classical pieces, consequently guiding him to a career as a composer. Just as Felsenfeld experienced, there was no way to know that a seemingly harmless book would start a love affair with reading that would last a lifetime, from The Chronicles of Narnia to the Harry Potter series, I was officially fascinated by the magic of reading novels.
Chopin, Kate. “The Story of an Hour”. The Seagull Reader: Stories. Ed. Joseph Kelly. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc, 2001. 65 – 67.
This demonstrates that the prisoners are part of a system where the needs of the collective are far more important than the needs of the individual (in both communism and in the prison.) It also reveals the corruption of the Soviet Union because it while it claims that everyone should be equal, the life of the prisoners in the camp are not valued at all. This could be due to the fact that prisoners in the camps aren’t viewed as people, but rather as animals that are being worked to their death.
Wilson, M. & Clark, R. (n.d.). Analyzing the Short Story. [online] Retrieved from: https://www.limcollege.edu/Analyzing_the_Short_Story.pdf [Accessed: 12 Apr 2014].
After reading The Story of An Hour by Kate Chopin, Daniel Deneau remarkably breaks down and analyzes the most intense aspects of the short story. Deneau acknowledges simple things such as “the significance of the open window and the spring setting” along with more complex questions including what Mrs. Mallard went through to achieve her freedom. He also throws in a few of his own ideas which may or may not be true. Almost entirely agreeing with the interpretation Deneau has on The Story of An Hour, he brings stimulating questions to the surface which makes his analysis much more intricate.
Chopin, Kate. “The Story of an Hour.” The Norton Introduction to Literature. Kelly J. Mays, ed. Portable 11th ed. New York: Norton, 2014. 278-280. Print.
...s in Short Fiction 36.3 (1999): 291+. Humanities Module. ProQuest. Carl Sandburg College, Galesburg, IL. CSC Lib 28 Feb. 2008
In the short story, “Story of an Hour,” Kate Chopin uses diction and syntax to demonstrate that as much as one yearns for freedom, it might not be everlasting.
Chopin, Kate. “The Story of an Hour.” Literature: Reading Fiction, Poetry, and Drama. Ed. DiYanni Robert. 6th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1986. 38-41. Print.
Chopin, Kate. “The Story of an Hour.” The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature. Eds. Elizabeth M. Schaaf, Katherine A. Retan, and Joanne Diaz. Boston: Bedford Books of St. Martin’s Press, 1997. 12-14. Print.
Chopin, Kate. “The Story of an Hour.” Backpack Literature. 4th ed. Ed. X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson: 2012. 168-170. Print.
Kate Chopin’s The Story of an Hour is a brilliant short story of irony and emotion. The story demonstrates conflicts that take us through the character’s emotions as she finds out about the death of her husband. Without the well written series of conflicts and events this story, the reader would not understand the depth of Mrs. Mallard’s inner conflict and the resolution at the end of the story. The conflict allows us to follow the emotions and unfold the irony of the situation in “The Story of an Hour.”
Chopin, Kate. “The Story of an Hour.” Backpack Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. Eds. X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. 3rd ed. New York: Pearson, 2010. 261-263. Print.
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.