Chopin Thesis Activity

 Thesis #2: By contrasting images of life with those of death throughout "The Story of an Hour," Kate Chopin highlights the struggle of a person imprisoned by societal pressures and thereby kept from fully being alive.

The author intentionally mentions an open window where Louise can look out from when she locks herself in the room.  When she looks out, Chopin uses the "patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds" that gives a sense that those blue patches are openings to a new life. She also adds how the clouds came and piled on one another, which represented her struggles and yet there was still those patches of blue sky. Suggesting she could almost fly through them to free herself from that prison room she had shared with her supposedly dead husband.

Thesis #3: Through the use of structure in her intentionally short story "The Story of an Hour," Kate Chopin ingeniously exposes the larger and more complex problem of oppression that can still be felt in our society today.

Kate Chopin uses the death of the husband efficiently since she mentions it in the beginning of the story. She does this so we can expect Louise to be sad about the situation. We begin to see the opposite, we can see that Louise felt oppressed by her husband . The author mentions "There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it" which keeps the story moving on towards the end where she awaits her new life. This is when Chopin brings the husband back and kills Louise's hopes literally and proving the point of her oppression.