The Story of an Hour Response Paper

The Story of an Hour

There is a lot literary about this short story. This text is full of similes, metaphors and personification. The use of alliteration helps to find out what is symbolic about this story. In the beginning, Mrs. Mallard finds out from her sister and a friend of her husband’s that her husband has been killed in a train accident. She automatically is crushed and begins to weep over the death of her husband. Anyone who finds out that a loved one has died is going to be sad. It is believable that Mrs. Mallard is sad. I think that when she gets over it and feels a sense of freedom was kind of believable. It all happened really fast and that is why I felt like it wasn’t necessarily truly believable. In the first sentence of this short story it tells us that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble. This helps the readers foreshadow her death at the end. I don’t know if that would resolve the text because it left me questioning why or how she actually died. Mrs. Mallard is overcome with sadness when she is told that Brently has died and when she starts thinking about what her life will become a sense of freedom is what is affecting her world. She doesn’t have to answer to anyone or live for anyone. From that moment on she was going to live for herself and be her own person—not what someone else wants her to be. Her thoughts about being free are driving the dramatic energy in this story. One wouldn’t think that someone could get over the death of a loved one so fast. I think there are two shifts in this story. One is when she first discovers Brently is dead because she becomes overwhelmed with sadness. And the second is when she recovers and decides to live for herself. I thought that it was very ironic that in the beginning she was told her husband was dead and when she is okay with it he turns out to be alive and then Mrs. Mallard ends of dying. She thinks that now that she is on her own she will have the chance to do things that she wants to do and not what she is told to do. I guess the stereotype of a typical woman is portrayed in this story—Mrs. Mallard is married and obviously she thinks that the man of the house is who runs it. I wouldn’t give this story and thumbs up or down. It was in the middle because I feel like it was too short of a story to determine whether it was good or bad. My gap question would be do you think that Mrs. Mallard would have died at the end anyway, even if Mr. Mallard turned out to be dead? She was ready to look at the world in a new light and was going to be optimistic but she still had a bad heart. It just says that she died of heart disease.