What Does It Mean To Say That Edna's Awakening Occurs In The Ocean?

Importance of Symbols In all novels the use of symbols are what make the story feel so real to the reader. A symbol as simple as a bird can mean so much more then what you see. Whereas a symbol as complicated as the sea, can mean so much less then what you thought. It is a person perception that brings them to the true meaning of a specific symbol. Symbols are message within a word that must be analyzed to discover. In The Awakening, Kate Chopin conveys her ideas by using carefully crafted symbols

different from the other self” (Chopin 67). The Awakening by Kate Chopin is a compelling story of a woman who is awakened from the miserable duties of a housewife and mother to a woman who falls in love and finds herself. This story is not to judge a woman for having an affair with her husband, but it is to make the reader fall in love with this woman named Edna and go with her on her journey of finding herself. Edna is an extraordinary character in The Awakening, and it makes the reader see the basis of

Women in the Victorian society had two main goals which were to marry a respectable man and to have/raise children. The society had a vision of the “perfect woman” who did what she was told and did not question it. She did what her mother did before her, and her mother did what her mother did before her. They were constricted, as if they lived in a box. They couldn’t go too far forward or backward and they couldn’t tray too far off the sides. There were high standards and a true Victorian woman upheld

I 1. What does the parrot say? What does it mean? How might these comments foreshadow what will occur in the novel? 2. Describe Leonce Pontellier. Specifically describe his reaction to the parrot, how he speaks to his wife, and his reaction to Mrs. Pontellier's question about dinner. 3. Describe the Pontellier children. 4. What is the role of the "quadroon"? 5. Who is Robert Lebrun? What is his part in this story? Chapter II 1. Describe Edna Pontellier. What does she look

up once or twice and mean something to the theme or main idea of the story. In The Awakening, one of the symbols is birds. Birds show up throughout the course of the novel, some examples of this would be, the parrots in the beginning showing Edna’s feelings towards her husband (page 1), the caged Mockingbird showing women being trapped, Edna in particular, and another example would be in the end as Edna walks into the ocean, she sees a bird with a broken wing, showing Edna’s feelings once again,