Monika Gonzalez
ENG 125
Elisabeth Heard
April 25, 2011
Reading Reflection
The Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin is an impressive literary piece that touches the reader’s feelings as well as the mind. Even thought that the story is short, it is very rich, complete, and it carries deep sense of meaning to everyone. It is also represented through a negative view of marriage with a woman that is not saddened by the death of her husband. It is a great view to read it carefully and pay attention to each and every word said in this story they are telling. This short story is trying to bring the meaning is not to believe everything that is told to you until it is seen with your own two eyes.
This short story was very interesting to because it captured how the main character experienced in her life regarding something that not everyone has the luck to have the happiness of freedom, but it will only be understood at the end of the story. In the story Mrs. Mallard has heart trouble and her friends come over to break the news about her husband’s death most gentle as possible. Most of the time with a story like that as the reader reads expects to be feeling sad and for a while they thought Mrs. Mallard wouldn’t be able to control herself from the pain of having her husband pass away. She understands the news and understands the news when the author shows it little by little on how she realizes it and what helps her to understand it. In one of the paragraphs it says “She goes to the room and there stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair into this she sank” (Chopin, 1851-1904). This is a symbol of security and comfort even though her husband died, the open window meaning the connection to another world. Mrs. Mallard ends up dying of joy that kills because she got to see her husband walk in after being told that he was killed. She dies from happiness of seeing her husband again and chooses rather to die than to live again
References: Clugston, R. (2010). Journey Into Literature. Bridgepoint Education, Inc.