The Awakening by Kate Chopin: Prose Analysis 2 of 2

A passage from pg. 136-137


         The water of the Gulf stretched out before her, gleaming with the million lights of the sun. The voice of the sea is seductive, never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander in abysses of solitude. All along the white beach, up and down, there was no living thing in sight. A bird with a broken wing was beating the air above, reeling, fluttering, circling, disabled down, down to the water.
         Edna had found her old bathing suit still hanging, faded, upon its accustomed peg.
         She put it on, leaving her clothing in the bath-house. But when she was there beside the sea, absolutely alone, she cast the unpleasant, prickling garments from her, and for the first time in her life stood naked in the open air, at the mercy of the sun, the breeze that beat upon her, and the waves that invited her.
         How strange and awful it seemed to stand naked under the sky! how delicious! She felt like some newborn creature, opening its eyes in a familiar world that it had never known.
         The foamy wavelets curled up to her white feet, and coiled like serpents about her ankles. She walked out. The water was chill, but she walked on. The water was deep, but she lifted her white body and reached out with a long, sweeping stroke. The touch of the sea is sensuous enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace.
         She went on and on. She remembered the night she swam for out, and recalled the terror that seized her at the fear of being unable to regain the shore. She did not look back now, but went on and on, thinking of the blue-grass meadow that she had traversed when a little child, believing that it had no beginning and no end.
         Her arms and legs were growing tired.
         She thought of Leonce and the children. They were a part of her life. But they need not have thought that they could posses her, body and soul. How Mademoiselle Reisz would have laughed, perhaps sneered, if she knew! "And you call yourself an artist! What pretensions, Madame! The artist must posses the courageous soul that dares and defies."
          Exhaustion was pressing upon and over-powering her.
          "Good by-because I love you." He did not know;he did not understand. He would never understand. Perhaps Doctor Mandelet would have understood if she had seen him-but it was too late; the shore was far behind her, and her strength was gone.
          She looked into the distance, and the old terror flamed up for an instant, then sank again. Edna heard her father's voice and her sister Margaret's. She heard the barking of an old dog that was chained to the sycamore tree. The spurs of the cavalry officer clanged as he walked across the porch. There was the hum of bees, and the musky odor of pinks filled the air.


Analysis:
           What beauty and enrichment this text gives to the story; especially as an ending! Kate Chopin had created this last portion of the story to tie the plot together. After reading this ending, the whole story had finally been tied together, and this "full-circle" ending had shown me the idea and value in how the story was structured in the first place. This concluding style provided emphasis in bringing about the story's meaning and Edna's end, along with the thoughts that ran through her mind before her suicide.
            I had discovered the extended metaphor of the bird with a broken wing that flapped in the air above the ocean in all its weakness, and had taken its last dive, falling into the ocean. This idea or ironic occurrence had symbolized Edna's fate. She was a bird who had a broken wing. She was weak through her sexual urges and her need to have someone there to satisfy those urges. In contrast to the beloved and dear strength that her children have to her, the weakness in her marriage life was definitely the broken wing because it tied her down. And, in place of the bird falling into the ocean, Edna swims farther out until she had used up all her strength and might and drowns in the ocean just as the bird has undergone.
            Chopin lines these ideas through the paragraphs above, recalling Edna's life. Chopin retells of her feminism through Edna's nakedness, then returns to describing Edna's proceeding into the ocean. Then again, she goes on and retells of Edna's first time being one with the ocean; bringing back the idea of her feeling as a child in the blue-grass meadow. Kate Chopin continues with Edna, then reflects back on Edna's history and memory, and so forth, until the moment of truth and fate strikes, the feeling of terror takes over, and Edna is gone.
            Lastly, the very last paragraph reminding us of her father and sister's voices, a dog chained to a sycamore tree; these sounds and a fresh odor, ends the story and leaves the trials and graciousness of Edna's soul in lingering in our minds. Through this passage, Kate Chopin has delivered to me the most ideal, feminist novella (along with its experience) with such a quality that allows me to put my life as a young woman back into its preferred perspective.