The Story of an Hour

In "The Story of an Hour," I can relate to so many different things that go on in this short tragic story. After reading the story I almost felt like Louise Mallard and I were living the same life with different events and a different outcome. Everything about the two of us comes down to being always misunderstood and just wanting to be free.

In the beginning of the story, we look at Louise Mallard from a bird's eye point of view. Louise is introduced as a devoted young wife who has been told the news of her husband's unfortunate death. When Chopin goes deeper into Louise's thoughts and feelings, they surprisingly contradict her initial description of her. I grew up in New Jersey my whole life. I lived in a huge house and everyone in my family drove nice, expensive cars. Everyone in my town pretty much knew who I was because of my family. In the town I lived in, this kind of popularity was a normal, everyday thing. Everybody on my street lived just as good as or better than me. Being different than all the other "rich kids" on the block, I hated that appearance that we were better than others, more privileged. I was definitely not what people expected to me to be. I didn't go to high school at Seton Hall Prep with the other "rich kids." I didn't like them. Instead I went to a more relaxed private high school called Chancellor Academy where the kids were definitely not like all the other "rich kids." These people were my real friends and could care less how much money I had. On top of not going to the school where everyone thought I should go, I was a skateboarder. What an image they have. So now not only am I looked at as a spoiled, little, rich kid, but a spoiled, little punk skateboarder. That was not who I was. I just wanted everyone to like me. I was definitely not one of those bratty rich kids and I never was a troublemaking skateboarder (for the most part). That's why I understand Louise so much. We were not what people expected us to be. We were just living our life how we had to.

Louise Mallard is seen by the reader as dependent and helpless because of how she is treated by others, even her own sister. When the news comes about her husband being killed, she tells her like one would tell a child that their dog just died. You can just sense how Louise has dealt with being hovered over her whole life by her sister. A good example of this is when her sister is pleading with her to come out of the room that she has locked herself into saying, " Louise, open the door! I beg; open the door - you will make yourself ill (16, paragraph 17.)" Being able to read Louise's thoughts, you discover that she is not weak in her mind and spirit, she is just highly confined.

In my life, being hovered over is an everyday, every hour, and every minute kind of thing for me. Since I was a baby, my parents have been highly overprotective. Like Louise, I am looked at by my parents as dependent and helpless. I am very much independent, but I am some what confined. Though I live by myself in a whole different state than my parents; it sometimes feels like they live right next door. The fact that my parents pay all of my bills, and on top of that pay me an allowance of someone with a full time job every Friday, seems to give them a right to barge in on my life. Having no complaints about any of this, I just wish that they could see that I don't absolutely need their money. I could go out and get a job and support myself like any other college student here in Gainesville, Florida.

Louise is afflicted with a heart condition. This condition is what makes everyone so worried about telling her that her husband is dead. They are worried about the emotional dependence she has on her husband and the physical toll it will have on her. This clarifies the way Louise has always been treated by those around her, even her husband, due to this heart condition. When