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Analysis Of The Short Story Of An Hour

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The first paragraph of The Story of an Hour summarizes the main elements of the short story. We can begin to see the story take shape as the author gets straight to the point by stating Mrs. Mallard’s health ailment and the possible danger of unexpected news is highlighted with the words, “…great care must be taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband’s death” (Mays 278). We can start to see the direction that Chopin is headed by this first paragraph and the title of the short story is a nod to the duration and the form of which this story will exist. I will begin my analysis by examining the title of this short story. Chopin is all too clever when she thought of this title. Chopin includes the duration of the short story (an hour) as well as letting us know that within this hour, the story will conclude. This gives us a time frame that will put the story into perspective when we continue reading about the events that will later occur to Mrs. Mallard. The title tells me that all the events in the story can be limited to an hour time frame and adds to the sense of immediacy to Mrs. Mallard’s situation. It gave me the feeling of being a part of Mrs. Mallard’s story as I was reading the words. The “Story” portion of the title I interpreted two different ways: we are reading a literary tale about fictional characters that Kate Chopin created and we are reading a story that Mrs. Mallard lives in. Chopin successfully wrote a story within a “story” in my

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