Essay on The Awakening - 712 Words

Critical Views of The Awakening The Awakening, written by Kate Chopin, is full of ideas and understanding about human nature. In Chopins time, writing a story with such great attention to sensual details in both men and women caused skepticism among readers and critics. However, many critics have different views with deeper thought given to The Awakening. Symbolism, the interpretation of Ednas suicide, and awakenings play important roles in the analysis of all critics. Symbolism in The Awakening is interpreted in many ways. It is important to understand the meaning of each explanation of symbolism given by every critic to fully appreciate the novel. Art, for example, becomes a symbol of both freedom and†¦show more content†¦However, Ednas suicide leaves many readers unsatisfied and disappointed. Almost everyone has their own interpretation of the ending. Ednas suicide represents her final attempt to fully escape.(Rosowski 46) She escapes her children, her lovers, and most important, time and change (Rosowski 47). As she swims out to sea and death, Ednas mind returns to her childhood dreams of limitlessness. In this sense, the sea symbolizes her dreams to have her youth back because it had no beginning and no end.(Rosowski 58). Edna imagines herself walking through the Kentucky meadows that she remembered from many years ago. Edna died, but in a way she had created her own limitless awakening. As the title of the novel reveals, awakenings are the most important as well as the most emotional parts of the story. Edna slowly awakens to her true self. She begins daily casting aside that fictitious self which we assume like a garment with which to appear before the world. She creates her own awakenings with dreams and paintings (Gilbert 104). It is as if she tried to begin again, making a life that she could control and to become a new woman and be herself rather than what she was expected to be. Ednas awakenings were all a part of her defining her own self(Rosowski 44). She feared to have the conventional life that so many women had become trapped in. As she awakens, Edna becomes less and less traditional by strippingShow MoreRelatedAwakenings Essay1018 Words   |  5 Pagesbeginning to end the movie The Awakening, Robin Williams demonstrates his knowledge of the scientific method. The scientific method is a procedure of steps that is used to prove something. In the movie it is used to show that patients suffering from an un-named disorder do have a slight opportunity to return to their normal state of being. The scientific method is a list of steps to prove something and make into a law or theory based on your final product andThe Awakening findings. It is composedRead MoreEssay on The Awakening751 Words   |  4 Pages The Awakening Analytical Essay THE AWAKENING Throughout Kate Chopin’s, The Awakening, numerous scenes of birth and renewal are depicted. Various symbols placed throughout the book show Edna Pontellier’s awakenings. For instance, many references are made to oceans and water. It is in the water that Edna has her first rebirth, but it is also the place where she chooses to die. Water symbolizes life, which is the reason that Edna’s renewal takes place there, but it also symbolizes darkness andRead More The Awakening Essay1036 Words   |  5 Pages The Awakening opens in the late 1800s in Grand Isle, a summer holiday resort popular with the wealthy inhabitants of nearby New Orleans. Edna Pontellier is vacationing with her husband, Là ©once, and their two sons at the cottages of Madame Lebrun, which house affluent Creoles from the French Quarter. Là ©once is kind and loving but preoccupied with his work. His frequent business-related absences mar his domestic life with Edna. Con sequently, Edna spends most of her time with her friend Adà ¨le RatignolleRead MoreEssay on The Awakening1358 Words   |  6 Pageswomen throughout America would be drastically different and would withhold fewer rights if it were not for women in the nineteenth and twentieth century like the characters Madame Ratignolle, Edna Pontellier, and Mademoiselle Reisz in the novel The Awakening, by Kate Chopin. They shaped America into a place where freedom and equality for women is possible. Although the three women were different, they all contributed to different aspects of the feminist movement. Each character represents a distinctRead More The Awakening Essay1609 Words   |  7 Pages Edna Pontellier Throughout The Awakening, a novel by Kate Chopin, the main character, Edna Pontellier showed signs of a growing depression. There are certain events that hasten this, events which eventually lead her to suicide. At the beginning of the novel when Ednas husband, Leonce Pontellier, returns from Kleins hotel, he checks in on the children and believing that one of them has a fever he tells his wife, Edna. She says that the child was fine when he went to bed, but Mr. PontellierRead More Essay on The Awakening733 Words   |  3 PagesCriticism of The Awakening      Ã‚   Reading through all of the different criticism of Kate Chopin’s The Awakening has brought about ideas and revelations that I had never considered during my initial reading of the novel.   When I first read the text, I viewed it as a great work of art to be revered.   However, as I read through all of the passages, I began to examine Chopin’s work more critically and to see the weaknesses and strengths of her novel.   Reading through others interpretations of herRead More The Awakening Essays982 Words   |  4 Pages The Awakening is a novel about the growth of a woman into her own person, in spite of the mold society has formed for her. The book follows Edna Pontellier through about a year of her life. During this time we see her struggle to find who she really is, because she knows she cannot be happy filling the role of the mother-woman that society has created for her. She did not believe that she could break from this pattern because of the pressures of society, and ends up taking her own life. ShouldRead MoreThe Awakening Essay728 Words   |  3 PagesThe novel The Awakening by Kate Chopin takes place in the early 1920s on the Grand Isles of Louisiana. The Grand Isles is a resort for the wealthy. The theme of this novel is about a woman named Edna who awakens to a new life as she discovers her independence. In the novel Edna also awakens to her love for Robert Leburn and most importantly she awakens to the knowledge that her husband is not in control of her life. Edna and Mr. Pontelliers relationship begins to get worse after he leaves forRead MoreEssay The Awakening640 Words   |  3 Pages The Awakening, by Kate Chopin, tells one woman’s story of her attempt to awaken to her true wants and desires for her life. When Edna Pontellier spends the summer on Grand Isle, she begins to think beyond the role of wife and mother that she has played so far. She begins to think of herself as a separate person with independent thoughts and feelings. Her transformation is difficult and she has great trouble deciding what she really wants in life. Edna attempts to discard all of the traditional valuesRead More The Awakening Essay1091 Words   |  5 Pagesthe fact that an author is able to convey his/her message clearer and include things in the book that cannot be exhibited in a movie. For this reason, the reader of the book is much more effected than the viewer of the film. In the novella, The Awakening, by Kate Chopin, there is much more evidence of symbolism as well as deeper meaning than in the movie version of the book, Grand Isle. Chopin conveys her symbolic messages through the main character’s newly acquired ability to swim, through the birds