The Story of an Hour
Antoine L. Womack
ENG125: Introduction to Literature (ADI1431D)
Instructor: Magdalena Sokolowski
August 6, 2014

This story immediately identifies the main character which is Mrs. Mallard who suffers from heart trouble, by revealing to her that her husband had passed away in a tragic accident the way it was told was handled with great care, due to her own health conditions. Josephine who is Mrs. Mallard sister would be the one to do so and Richard being her Husband friend would also comfort her also with his presence. This short story is very literary capturing because it’s a story that many people can relate to and have experience some type of close death in the family. Also they with the way it was handle to break the news to her about her husband death; this is something that also many can relate to especially if they are also dealing with health issues their self. What also was literary capturing with this story was the way family members and friends took inconsideration to tell her the news about her husband being passed away. Even though the story that was told was very sorrowing the way it was said it seem as if the author put a lot of thought into the way she went about what was said.
The details of the grief she felt was very literary capturing in this story. The author of this story also went into great detail to make the reader feel as if they was there and had experience this sad sorrow themselves. The way the author would build you with the leading details to how the tragedy happens and how much grief Mrs. Mallard was in was also very capturing. You being the reader would think that the author was either talking about herself for experiencing death in such a tragic way, that this short story was written about themselves. To believe that a story could be told in such detail and grieving way being the reader makes it very overwhelming on how this story was be delivered to the reader. With so much happening to Mrs. Mallard in the story you can see that her senses had hyping up and that she was seeing things different form the others in the story.
Persona
Figurative language is one of Kate Chopin’s skills use is this story. For In the Story of an Hour the author uses great extended metaphor in explaining Mrs. Mallard health conditions. When she quotes "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." Another figurative language skill that the author Kate Chopin’s use will be in the final line of her cause of death by quoting "When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease of the joy that kills." Chopin’s uses Mrs. Mallard physical heart conditions that she battles with herself and external conflict of her husband death she successfully extends this metaphor to engage the reader in the plot driven by these conflicts.
The tone Kate Chopin’s sets in The Story of a hour as if Mrs. Mallard is very fragile in to taking the news in her husband death, is not the case at all, for she is in a very happy mood in starting her new journey without him. For death is usually used with dark words, which clearly she describes it will happy words. She describes the trees "aquiver with the new spring life" and the "delicious breath of rain." That this confirms that she is not sad but indeed very happy to continue this journey without her husband.
I being the reader thought through the whole story that she was sad of her husband passing which reading to the end clearly wasn’t the case. Mrs. Mallard was very joyful in the inside knowing that she could continue her journey in life as a freed woman and even on the outside she may have seemed sad so was very joyful inside. The information that was received from the doctor to her at the end that in fact her husband did make made her very shocked and caused her death. Many thought it was the overwhelming joyfulness of her husband surviving caused her death but in fact it was the sense that she was overwhelmed that he had made which sadden her in shocked to the point she dies.

References:
Clugston, R. W. (2014). Journey into literature (2nd ed.). San Diego, California: Bridgepoint Education, Inc.
Seversted, P.(2006). The Complete Works of Kate Chopin.Baton Rouge: Louisiana State UP, 1969, 2006. Retrieved from: http://www.katechopin.org/the-story-of-an-hour.shtml