Yes..I still awake eventhough it is midnight.

I read book "The Awakening" written by Kate Chopin.I wanted to read this book since I learn it in American Literature History class. The story was so interesting!! But some people would not like it because, the story includes sexual expression.


Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. New York, New York: Viking Penguin Inc., 1983, 143pages.

Responding To the Plot:
If I was Edna, the main character of the story, I would have done the same things as she had done except commit suicide. I prefer live to death. I will disappear with saying nothing to all people I know and start absolute new life. I felt empathy to her as an individual woman. Although I’m not married and having no children I could understand her feelings when I imagine my marriage life which may be waiting for me in near future.
Edna had affairs with two men even though she was married. Robert is the first guy had an affair with Edna, He truly loved her. The second guy whose name is Alcee wanted just Edna’s body at first but he eventually loved her. I would like to change this part because all men in this novel including her husband loved Edna too much, so I didn’t want Alcee love her both physically and mentally. I think the men around Edna are making the story a little bit boring.
“I would give up unessential; but I wouldn’t give myself”(p.56), I like this remark because I think this is the all she hoped to. I think she wanted tell that we all are individual human regardless of existed position, custom or traditional.


Literary Analysis:

1) Setting
At the Potellier family’s seaside resort Grand Isle, Louisiana and in the New Orleans where they have a house. The time is while the author lived, so it may around 1850-1900.

2) Points of view
The story is told from the third person.

3) Conflict
Edna verses her position (being mother and wife). She verses her environment (Creoles’ community, their custom and tradition, people’s stereotypes). She Verses herself.

4) Climax
When Edna went into ocean with no clothes and killed herself.

5) Symbol
Beach, or Ocean. These represented freedom in the story.

6) Irony
Edna has everything to spend happy life. She has a nice husband who is a very successful business man and has cute kids. She should be happy however she was not satisfied. She had questions about her life and she liberated her inner emotions and artistic ambition. She decided to free herself from her old life including her social position, her role as a wife and her role as a mother and had affair with guys. Her betrayal to peoples’ standards or moral can be taken as an irony by readers.

7)Theme
Women’s awakenings of essential human instinct from being properties of men.

Reflecting on the Story:
I didn’t expect I could feel so much empathy to the main character, when I first read summary of the story. Edna was in the position where she should not have done the things what she had done. The way she love men is against morality but it is not uncomprehensible. No one would hate her because everyone has desire or ambitious like she had, this is why this novel is interesting and captive.
The author of this novel, Kate Chopin, has similar background to Edna, so the author’s life must be reflected to The Awakening. Kate Chopin started writing after her husband died. She was released from being husband’s property and got her own life. This experience might have inspired her to write this kind of novels.
I fully agree with author’s view of life, because it is true that sometimes existed people’s standards, position, custom or traditional bothers me to reach myself what I really wished to be. I sometimes wanted break through those, but I couldn’t and struggled like Edna. I learned that, we have to consider more what is unessential and what is essential for us.