Jeffrey Moran
ENG 2000
Journal Entries
In Kate Chopin’s “Story of an Hour,” why isn’t her name revealed in the beginning of the story? We are first introduced to Louise Mallard as “Mrs. Mallard in the beginning of the story, but it isn’t until some point towards the end when her sister, Josephine, calls out her name, "Louise, open the door! I beg; open the door--you will make yourself ill. What are you doing, Louise? For heaven's sake open the door.” I believe the reasoning behind this is that before she finds out about her husband’s death and has her epiphany (and gains her freedom), she has no identity. She is simply known as Mrs. Mallard. However, once she is freed from her marriage and the inferiority and constraints it brings, she…show more content… At first glance, one may think that it is a wife talking to her husband. You get the idea that it is a woman speaking to her husband, and when she says “And what goes on, my love, while you’re away, you’ll never know” you imagine that she might be having some sort of affair. However, the two people in this poem are in fact not together. She is simply infatuated with him, and throughout the poem she details on how she is head over heels for him but he can’t seem to see that. Any time they see each other he only talks about his adventures with other women, and with each adventure he tells her about her heart dies another death. Despite all the signals she gives him, he never sees how deeply in love she is with him, and thus he’ll “never…show more content… First, the obvious edge: Sonny, the main character, plays music — he plays the blues. Music is his passion and keeps him going. Blues is actually a genre of music, stemming from Jazz music. Towards the end of the story, Creole remarks “Listen, listen. Now these are Sonny's blues.” It’s as if he’s saying that not only is this blues music, but these are Sonny’s blues — Sonny’s bottled-up emotions “filling the air with his life.” Now, for the deeper meaning: Sonny is upset with life. Addicted to drugs at an early age, he has a troubled life and is what some people would call “blue,” blue meaning sad, discontent, unhappy, etc. You’re led to believe that the story is about him and his music, but it’s really about the blues that he’s battled throughout his life as he recovered from his drug addiction. He considers himself an outcast and turns to playing the blues to voice his