Roles Nature Plays

Cory Williams

Claudia Minton

ENGL 107

1/14/2018

Title: Roles Nature Plays

        Most children learn they can do what they want and not do what they don’t want to do. To achieve our goals, we must do what’s necessary which may not always be what any person wants to do. In a short story written by Kat Chopin “Ripe Figs” states Maman-Nainaine told Babette “that when the figs were ripe. Babette might go to visit her cousins down on the Bayou-Lafourche where the sugar cane grows.”

        This statement of Maman-Nainaine to Babette, gives this child incentive with the possibility of going to her cousin’s house down on Bayou-Lafourche. Maman-Nain used the word “might” as a possible reward system that children thrill of, getting something that they want and desire with a hidden message of teaching Babette a life lesson of patience.

        “It seemed to Babette a very long time to wait for the leaves upon the tree were tender yet” younger children are impatient and need to be taught about having patience’s and the value of patience among other core principles to be successful in life. It shows through this short story that Babette became “disconsolate”. Although she may have been sad at times when she had to wait for the fig tree to ripen, she naturally had to find a way to occupy her time and build patience until the fig tree ripened.

Babette finally was over joyed with happiness in the end of this story with knowing her reward in the possibility of seeing her cousin. This very short story shows that teaching children about life lessons early and providing them an education is something that will give them a great foundation in life and increase the probability that children can achieve any goal that they may have set out for themselves in the future.

          “The Story of An Hour” symbolizes that Kate Chopin was ahead of her peers in being able to portray Mrs. Mallard’s death, as a glimpse to how women were being oppressed. Mrs Mallard discovers that her husband, Brently Mallard’s name is on the list of “killed” stated by her sister Josephine. “Mrs Mallard is overwhelmed with emotion with the inability to accept its significance of what happened.” She was overwhelmed with a possibility of caring or loving feeling for her husband that couldn’t be explained due to many women losing their husbands in type fashion while working on the railroad in the 1890’s.

        “She could see in the open square before her house on the top of the trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life”. This statement by Chopin states that this is where the possibility of her freedom came into her mind of starting new. Mrs Mallard feels that could have been having the thought of a new future and just having a new fresh start in life without the possibility of being repressed.

Mrs Mallard has been oppressed since a child who has cried as child for her freedom even in her dreams. “There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully.”  The realization of her independence started to flow through her body as she imagined what was the feeling of being free was going to be and embraced it.

Mrs Mallard decided that she would live and be for herself claiming her independence for possibly the first time when she said it over and over under her breath: “free,free,free”. The vacant stare and the look of terror in her eyes of the possibility of being able to make her own decisions and decide for herself for the first time how she wants to live her life.

Mrs Mallard knew she would weep for her husband during processions while she was thinking of him dead laying in his casket. Although women in the 1980’s being repressed at that time I believe that some women like Mrs Mallard still loved their husbands to a degree. Having to go through the situations that women have had too, is still a very rough and tragic event that happened in the 1890’s. But with her seeing passed the moment of a long procession she knew there would have years of freedom to come that would absolutely belong to her alone.

Mrs Mallard acknowledged that she was finally “free free free” and “Free! Body and Soul with her Sister Josephine. Absolutely without a doubt Mrs Mallard was finally free from oppression as she thought with the possibly of freeing her sister Josephine so they both could live free lives together and make their own decisions in the journey of life.

Although Chopin states that Mrs Mallard dies from “heart disease” I believe her death signifies the loss of her freedom and having to go back to being oppressed because of Brently Mallard was “amazed by Josephine’s piercing cry.” Which means Josephine must have been ecstatic for her sister at the top of the steps knowing she was going to be free, to crying upon seeing Brently Mallard symbolized alive ended the dreams of both sisters having freedom.