Literary Analysis of Kate Chopins the Story of an Hour and Alice Walkers Everyday Use - Book Report/Review Example

?Literary Analysis of Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” and Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” Even though Kate Chopin’s “The Story of an Hour” and Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” are written in different centuries, both short stories have a meaningful theme, plot, characterization, setting and narrative point of view. In “The Story of an Hour” written in 1894, Kate Chopin portrays the tragic death of Louise Mallard in very puzzling circumstances. Written much later in 1973, Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” foregrounds the life tribulations of a single mother and her two daughters. Even though “The Story of an Hour” and “Everyday Use” employ different themes and narrative points of views, both stories use a strong plot, setting and characterization that contribute to a better understanding of the texts. Both stories have very explicit and relevant plots that help readers comprehend the main aspects very easily. In Chopin’s story, the narrator’s introduction of Mrs. Mallard and the reference to her health issues prepare the reader to the unfolding of the story: “Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband’s death” (Chopin). This sentence sums up the whole story and informs readers of Brently Mallard’s death; however, what follows comes as a surprise because instead of mourning her husband’ death, Louise seems to enjoy it. Even though she cried when she heard the news, right after that she started to plan her future. Commenting on Mrs. Mallard this article informs: “If immediately after learning of the death of her husband Louise had gone through a rapid logical process leading to a celebration of her total freedom, she might have seemed to be a hard, calculating, and therefore unsympathetic woman” (Deneau). Even if this critic is trying to explain her attitude, not much time has really elapsed between the time she learnt the information and the time she started to enjoy. On the other hand, “Everyday Use” portrays, Mama, an African American single mother, and her struggle to raise her daughters, Dee and Maggie. The story mainly focuses on the difference between the sisters and Mama’s relationship with each of her children. The contrast between Dee and Maggie is overwhelming and reflects their different personalities. Mama as the narrator of the story dramatizes the difference even more: “Have you ever seen a lame animal, perhaps a dog run over by some careless person rich enough to own a car, sidle up to someone who is ignorant enough to be kind to him? That is the way my Maggie walks” (Walker). This pitiful description is the image Mama has about her daughter. Injured when the house they used to live in burnt down, Maggie still carries the impact of the accident with her. Mama explains her physical difference with her sister: “Dee is lighter than Maggie, with nicer hair and fuller figure” (Walker). This physical difference is closely related to their different personalities. This statement reveals: “We must remember from the beginning that the story is told by Mama; the perceptions are filtered through her mind and her views of her two daughters are not to be accepted uncritically. Several readers have pointed out that Mama's view of Maggie is not quite accurate” (Farrell). Indeed. Regardless of the lack of physical beauty Mama perceives, Maggie has an inner beauty that her mother fails to grasp. Moreover, in “The Story of an Hour,” Mrs. Mallard’s ephemeral mourning gives way to enjoyment when she realizes the opportunity of freedom her husband’s death represents for her. She may not have considered herself a victim before nor did she anticipate or even plan her husband’s death; however, now that he is dead she decides to take fully advantage of her time. Analyzing Louise’ sudden change the narrator argues: “There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She did not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name. But she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air” (Chopin). This strange feeling generates the new reflection she has about her life and engages her in an attempt to give her life a new meaning. This critic gives a supernatural explanation to Louis’ new experience: “In a limited space, and without the assistance of a psychological vocabulary, Chopin may have been forced to rely on the indefinite, the unidentified, which, as best we can judge, is some powerful force, something supernatural, something beyond the realm of mundane experience or the rule of logic” (Deneau). However, whatever one may qualify this sudden change, this joy does not last long since it is shortly followed by Louis’ death. In fact, believing her husband dead, his unexpected return causes a heart attack that proves fatal to Louis. Having carefully planned her future life without Brently Mallard, the deception of his coming back costs her live even though the doctors seem to think that she dies of the joy to see him alive. Besides, in “Everyday Use,” apart from the physical difference, another major handicap for Maggie is the lack of education. Although Dee gets the chance to go to college, Maggie stays home and mainly strives to read and write. Maggie’s injury makes her a victim and causes her to suffer an unequal treatment compared to her sister. Instead of getting Maggie a proper treatment allowing her to enjoy a better healing, Mama and the community prefer to collect money and give Dee an education. Talking about Dee, Mama asserts: “I used to think she hated Maggie, too. But that was before we raised the money, the church and me, to send her to Augusta to school” (Walker). Attending college changes Dee completely as she questions her identity and chooses another name. Her return home makes her transformation more visible and creates clashes of views with her mother and sister. According to Susan Farrell: “Many readers point to Dee's proclamation of her new name as the turning point in the story, the point at which Dee pushes her mother too far. They point out that Dee is rejecting her family heritage and identity in this scene.” This name change deeply hurts Mama who finally realizes Dee is not the person she thought she was. Mama assimilates Dee’s rejection of her name to the rejection of her family and inheritance and becomes conscious that the expectations she placed on Dee were too high. Mama finally understands that Maggie is worth than she has ever granted her. Both “The Story of an Hour” and “Everyday Use” employ a strong characterization that helps convey the stories’ meaning. The main character in Chopin’s story is Mrs. Mallard, and the whole story turns around her. Her fragile health causes her sister, Josephine, and Richards, her husband’s friend to take good care to reveal the news about her husband’s death. However, her survival from the shock leads to another puzzle when she locks herself in her room and reflects about her future life. The joy she feels after her husband’s death amazes many readers who fail to understand the real motive for such an attitude. This writer notes: “About one issue, at least among readers of anthologies, there may be continuing debate: is Louise a normal, understandable, sympathetic woman, or is she an egocentric, selfish monster or anomaly?” (Deneau) Indeed, many readers cannot conceive how a woman can enjoy her husband’s death or anybody’s death for that matter, regardless of the tensions that may have existed in their relationships. Her sudden death that happened when she saw her husband indicates the seriousness of her plans and the disappointment she felt about his return. Brently Mallard was alive and was not even aware of the accident that presumably killed him. He is now facing the sudden death of his wife the cause of which he will never know. “Everyday Use” has three main characters around which the story evolves. As a single mother, Mama strives hard to raise her children and manage her household. Here is how she describes herself: “I am a large, big-boned woman with rough, man-working hands” (Walker). She is both the mother and father of her children and works hard to satisfy their needs. However, the distinction she makes between Dee and Maggie reveals the hope she places in Dee and the despair she feels for Maggie. But these expectations will be vain and become a frustration after she realizes that Dee denies her identity. This anger leads to an attempt to even things up when she chooses to give the quilt to Maggie instead of Dee. Farrell notes: “Ironically, in acting against Dee's wishes here, Mama is truly behaving more like Dee, with her refusal to back down, her willingness to stand up for herself, than she is like the patient and longsuffering Maggie.” This decision indicates that Mama has finally understood that she cannot count on Dee who only cares for herself. Dee pretends to claim her African heritage by changing her name, and she provides the following explanation: “I couldn’t bear it any longer, being named after the people who oppress me” (Walker). She invokes the history of slavery and segregation in earlier years to justify her attitude. This critic argues: “That Dee constructs a whole from which she excludes herself is no doubt Dee's way of maintaining a relation to a world that she does not want to be a part of. Dee has not returned to fill a place held for her while she was absent” (Whitsitt). This claim of a new identity based on white people’s oppression of blacks does not make her closer to her heritage either because her desire to keep the quilt for herself does not originate from a deep understanding of her culture but a mere willingness to show off. On the opposite side, though portrayed as lame and uneducated, Maggie possesses a thorough knowledge of her culture and is smarter than Mama thinks. Though bearing the bruises of her physical handicap, she expresses a maturity her sister does not possess. Both stories have meaningful themes that allow readers to comprehend them. “The story of an Hour” exposes the complexity of life whose turns and twists nobody can predict. Despite her careful planning of her future life, Louise Mallard suddenly dies living behind a husband whose presumed death she deeply enjoys. This assertion indicates: “In the patriarchal world of the nineteenth-century United States that Chopin depicts, a woman was not expected to engage in self-assertion” (Jamil). That excess may have caused her doom; however, many readers think she got what she deserved. On the other hand, “Everyday Use” foregrounds the importance of being rooted in one’s tradition and culture. Through the quilts, Walker expresses African American culture and lets readers judge the understanding of each of the characters. According to Whitsitt: “Among some critics there is a tendency, which finds encouragement in Walker's writing itself, to claim a strong analogy between quilting and storytelling, which allows one in turn to see Walker's storytelling as metaphorically subsumable to quilting.” Both quilting and storytelling are part of African culture. The short stories use different narrative points of views; If Chopin’s story employs the third person narrative, Walker’s uses the first person point of view. In “The Story of an Hour,” the narrator tells the whole story and sometimes becomes omniscient and enters Louis’ mind to reveal her feelings and thought: “Her pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body” (Chopin). This inner portrayal of Louise’s internal body reveals the nature of the narrator. Besides, Mama is the narrator in Walker’s story and tells the whole story from her own point of view. She even relates the conversations between the characters: “‘You just don’t understand,’ she said, as Maggie and I came out to the car” (Walker). This first person narrative explains why readers don’t know anything about Dee’s life on campus since Mama was not there to report it. This represents a limitation in the first person narrative. Even though Chopin and Walker’s short stories have different themes and narrative points of views, both stories use plot, characterization and setting efficiently in order to get readers to comprehend their texts. If both stories use the same setting since they take place in houses, they also employ a different language because Walker uses an African American dialect to express her characters’ background whereas Chopin uses a colloquial language. Works Cited Deneau, Daniel P. “Chopin's ‘The Story of an Hour.’” The Explicator 61.4 (2003): 210-213. ProQuest. Web. 8 May 2012. Farrell, Susan. “Fight vs. flight: A Re-evaluation of Dee in Alice Walker's ‘Everyday Use.’" Studies in Short Fiction 35.2 (1998): 179-186. ProQuest. Web. 8 May 2012. Jamil, Selina. “Emotions in ‘The Story of an Hour.’” The Explicator 67.3 (2009): 215-220. ProQuest. Web. 8 May 2012. Whitsitt, Sam. “In Spite of It All: Reading of Alice Walker's 'Everyday Use.’” African American Review 34.3 (2000): 443-60. ProQuest. Web. 8 May 2012. Read More