Mid-Term Writing Test

Part A
3. Mrs. Mallard is at first very saddened by the news of her husband's death, but when she is sitting on her arm chair she mentions a sentence : "But she saw beyond that bitter moment...". This sentence explains that while she is sad, she nows that from now on she can live her own life, without her husband's domination.

5. This part of the text is certainly the one that shows the best how Mrs. Mallard really feels about her husband's death. While the scenery described in the text isn't in itself important, it expresses the state of her mind, a total interruption of thought. Also, I believe that the way the background is presented really evokes the sensation of intellectual freedom, where you see the things in life from a totally new angle, a better one maybe.

7. These two emotions have a very important place in the text, and we really get to know of their existence in Mrs. Mallard's mind pretty much only when she is sitting alone in her armchair. She had just cried and let her sadness free, and she now understands that yes, it is a difficult moment, but that the rest of her life would be happier, deprived of her husband's oppressing will.


Part B

« The Story of an Hour » is a fantastic short story written by Kate Chopin, a woman from St-Louis, whose life greatly affected this story. I personally believe that the most important aspect of this text is the irony present in it, because it is what makes it so original. The structure of the text as well as its message have a really strong link with this humour type and this is also what I’d like to convince you to believe.

Firstly, I’d like to indicate that the structure of the text, once analyzed really tells us that irony is the main component of the text. If we try to take the hints that Kate Chopin left us about the ironic nature of the message during the whole text, we will find that it really surrounds the whole story. In fact, only by looking at the first sentence, we learn about two of the most important ironic elements of the story: her heart weakness and the death of her husband. And, this irony arrives at a first high point in the middle of the text when Mrs. Mallard is sitting alone in her armchair. There is this one moment where her emotions change from sadness to happiness. The only feeling a reader could be waiting for is sadness, but instead, the writer decided to shock us when Mrs. Mallard repeats the word “free”. And finally, when we get near the ending, the author gives back life to the husband, which is the moment where everything else crumbles. In fact, the next and last sentence announce us the death of the character, and proves us that the story’s theme was irony, because its components were located at the beginning, in the middle and at the complete end of the short story.

Secondly, we could analyze the message that the author tries to highlight, so we can try to understand why she used so much irony in it or why this theme is so well developed. The best way to start to decorticate this piece of literature is reading the author’s biography. When we read it, we really understand how mixed are the character’s and writer’s lives. Kate Chopin was raised with free women, all widows and later became a widow herself. That is why I think a part of the theme of the story is about marriage and men-women relations at the time, but I think irony still is more representative of the essence of the text. Kate Chopin was a very religious person, and the way life treated her (death of her brothers, father, mother and husband) really deceived her and made her become maybe a little bitter. And this is why I think she decided to write a story about the cruelty of life, or, I should say the irony of life.

445 words

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Questions :

1) Where and when does the story take place?

2)Who are the characters?

3)What is their relationship?

4)What is the mood of the scene?

5)What and whom are they talking about?