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Story Of An Hour Rhetorical Analysis

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Esme Ivory Mrs. Moore English II ECHS A1 27 September 2023 Mrs. Mallard & Her Inner Change In the story, Mrs. Mallard's reaction to her husband's death reveals her true feelings as she slowly goes through a process of realization. As she goes through this process, her inner self changes as well. In the passage “Story of an hour”, Kate Chopin uses actions, and specific language to convey her sorrow to the readers. Chopin states: “But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed off yonder.” The mention of her dull eyes that were fixed off yonder tells me as a reader that Mrs. Mallard was miserable at this moment. She is locked up in a room all alone filled with despair. And she is disassociating with her surroundings; not staring …show more content…

In the story, Mrs. Mallard thinks something is coming for her and later on the realization of what that was dawned on her. During this realization she repeatedly whispered to herself: “Free, free, free!”. The use of dialogue helps us understand that this feeling that was coming to her was freedom. It reveals that to Mrs Mallard, her husband’s death meant that she was in fact free, and she was clearly ecstatic about the sudden awareness. As we move past this point, Mrs. Mallard’s thoughts reveal to us her true feelings, not only about her husband's death, but about her husband in general. She feels repressed by her marriage, and no longer wants to be lived for. In the story, Mrs. Mallard declared that: “..she loved him—sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter? What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in the face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!” This statement made by Mrs. Mallard conveys that she did not care much about the fact that her marriage wasn't true to her. Mrs. Mallerd’s new-found freedom and enthusiasm for her new life was much more important to her than anything else at that time. So

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