August Zitzka 1000762783

Unit 12- The Awakening #1-13

2112-26274-700: ENGL2329

April 20, 2011

Kate Chopin’s story “The Awakening”(Chopin 1899) provides a realistic multiplicity (McFarland 2011) with her portrayal of the main character’s emotional trap. Internal conflict naturally invokes feelings of anxiety inside an individual. When an individual is caught between a dissatisfying situation and hope of being more satisfied, it ultimately becomes their trap. Individuals either do something productive about it or they let it eat themselves up inside till utter destruction.  The emotional trap in the story is the obvious depiction of a turn of the century American wife living a subservient and submissive role yet anguishing to be set free. She eventually drowns herself in what is the apparent break out.  On many “deeper levels and broader scopes”(McFarland 2011) the anguish that the author portrays reaches across genders and far beyond times of that period.  This emotional crevice Chopin portrays is one in which internal conflict can lead any individual in the human race to experience this trap at some point in their life whether it be intimate relationships, careers, socioeconomic situations, or anything else. This deeper and broader scope of internal conflict is hinted at several times in the story within the first 13 chapters. The author illustrates this by juxtaposing sets of emotional trigger words throughout the text and across several of the characters. A few examples of these are “jest”-“earnest”[Robert], “frightened”-“pleased”[Edna], and  “admiration”-“apprehension”[little girls’ mother].  A visual representation of the main character’s emotional trap is exquisitely represented in the Youtube video posted by Tn0tt “The Awakening Movie Trailer”. (Tn0tt 2009) The link to this movie trailer can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bETlQsYaTKc.  It is equally true that anyone can feel conflicted in the crevice of an emotional trap for any one of a multitude of reasons.

Works Cited

Kate Chopin, “The Awakening” 1899, Herbert S. Stone & Co., Ed Electronic Text Center-Univ.

of Virginia Library, Revised March 1999 corrector Elizabeth Styron, 20 April 2011,

< http://etext.virginia.edu/etcbin/toccer-new2?id=ChoAwak.sgm&images=images/modeng&data=/texts/english/modeng/parsed&tag=public&part=all>.

Mitzi McFarland, “American Realism: 1865-1910” 2011, Ed.University of West Georgia, 2011,

20 April 2011,

< http://www.westga.edu/~mmcfar/worksheet%20on%20American%20Realism.htm>.

Tn0tt, “The Awakening Movie Trailer” 12 Dec, 2009, Ed. Google.com / YouTube, LLC, 2011,

20 April 2011

< http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bETlQsYaTKc>.



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