THE ACTIONS OF THE HAPPY PRINCE

“The Happy Prince” is a fairy tale Oscar Wilde wrote for his two sons but its educational and humane value go far beyond the fairy world of children. The story develops children's compassion and sympathy for the poor and makes adults look back on their attitude toward the unfortunate people around them. All the good actions of the Happy Prince are so worthy and touching that he deserves our respect and admiration.

The Happy Prince's actions of helping the poor are worthy of respect. Without the ruby from his sword hilt, the seamstress's son may die of fever. His immediate and valuable action also helps the playwright out with a sapphire to buy food and firewood and escape from hunger and coldness. Again, the Happy Prince prevents the poor little match seller from being beaten by giving her the remaining sapphire. He is not hesitant to strip himself of all fine gold leaves to help the homeless children. Although the Happy Prince is a beautiful statue, a splendid work of art, he accepts his dull and grey appearance to help the needy to have a happy and sufficient life. His actions deserve being appreciated and praised.

From the viewpoint of a Christian, I consider his worthy actions as a redemption. In the past, when he was alive, he was a selfish prince who only sought for and enjoyed pleasure. He shut himself in his palace away from those who really need his help. Living in the upper class, he never looked down at the lower class to see what life they led, what trouble they were in, what kinds of dreams they desired for and what misery they were suffering. Now after his death, when people erect him high above on the tall column, he has a chance to see the pain, sorrow, misery, poverty, ugliness and suffering of the poor and the needy around him. His lead heart is filled with love, pity and compassion. But it is too late. How can he help others while he can not move and has no power? Contrary to the past, although he was a young and powerful prince and easily used his authority to help the poor, he never cared for them who just lived outside his palace. Now, he is a statue and he has no way to help the poor but gradually takes off the precious jewels and sacrifices his beautiful appearance. All his actions are the worthy cost he must pay for the selfishness and the neglected duty of caring for the poor. As a redemption, all his actions are worthy to correct his bad behaviors and compensates for his wrong deeds.

All the Happy Prince's actions are worthy because they help change the swallow's thinking who used to be self – centered and inconsiderate like the prince. At first, he did not intend to help the prince to distribute his precious jewels to the poor and was eager to fly to Egypt. However, it is the Happy Prince's action that makes him moving and sympathetic to the compassionate prince as well as the needy. Moreover, the Happy Prince's actions help him form a profound friendship with the swallow and together they make a difference in the lives of the unfortunate. The swallow delays his migration and stays over winter with the blind prince and even sacrifices his life in the icy winter. The Happy Prince's actions are so worthy that they change the swallow's thinking completely: from a adventure – loving swallow, he is now a faithful friend, a willing messenger who helps bring happiness to the poor.

The Happy Prince does all the things he can do to help the poor, which in turn helps him find real happiness. His worthy actions make him realize what is real happiness and he is willing to share this real happiness with the poor even when he must sacrifice all the valuable possessions. His worthy actions bring back to him a position in the Heaven. That is a reward in return for what he did.

The story ends and leaves behind a feeling of happiness and satisfaction. Although the Happy Prince is no longer a beautiful work of art but a grey and dull statue, he is now enjoying real happiness in return for his worthy actions in the Heaven. The image of a motionless statue helping the poor again urges us – human beings – to do something to help the poor community around us.

FLIGHT

Flight by Doris Lessing

Essay 1

Love is one of the most powerful emotions that will usually exist when everything else has gone. Therefore, it is really miserable when you have to let go of the one you love. In the short story “Flight” by Doris Lessing, we see how much the granddad loves his granddaughter, and how he does not want to give her up to someone else. This love comes to the granddad a lot of conflicts, he wants to keep his granddaughter but in the other hand, he has to learn and accept of letting go of his granddaughter as a circle of life. “Flight” was published in 1957, in a collection of short stories entitled The Habit of Loving.

Throughout the story, all of the characters have their proper names -  Alice, Lucy, Steven - except for one person, the main character: the old man. He is anonymous from the beginning to the end. Doris Lessing lets the main character go nameless in order to show that what happens to this character could happen to anyone. Moreover, the old man seems to be a symbol of the old generation who always wants to keep their children in their way.

At the beginning of the story, we see the old man loves pigeons. He calls them homing pigeons because of their excellent natural instinct, they are always able to find their way home back even far away from home hundreds of miles. One of them is his favorite pigeon which he depicts as “a young plump-bodied bird” and often plays with by calling “Pretty, pretty, pretty”. It is without doubt to say that his favorite pigeon is an embodiment of his granddaughter – Alice. From this image, the old man seems to say how beautiful his Alice is, how much he loves her, and how hopeful his daughter can be like the homing pigeons -  always knows the way home back to him, always be with him, and never leaves him alone.

The old man may be still happy if he did not see his granddaughter “swinging on the gate” and “She was gazing past the pink flowers, past the railway cottage where they lived, along the road to the village”. His mood suddenly changes because he knows what his granddaughter doing at the gate, she is waiting for her boyfriend, Steven, the postman’s son. She is eighteen years old and going to get married. The old man does not like it. He is fearful of losing his last granddaughter. Seeing Alice near the gate brings him a chilly feeling because the gate seems a transition between home and the outside world, childhood and maturity. It will take Alice out of his home, out of his control, enter a new world and never return. He wants to keep Alice for himself and avoids her not being like her three other sisters who got married and then “transformed inside a few months from charming petulant spoiled children into serious young matrons”. That is why he shouts at Alice angrily “Waiting for Steven, hey ?”, then “Think you want to leave home, hey ?. Think you can go running around the fields at night ?”, and finally “I’ll tell your mom”. And we can see “his fingers curling like claws into his palm”. This point describes him as a wild and ferocious pigeon, he becomes aggressively to intervene his granddaughter’s love affair in order to keep Alice always be with him.

The story goes on with the fact that the old man cannot keep Alice . She loves Steven and will marry him next month. “There’s no reason to wait” as his daughter said. This comes to the old man that “He would be left, uncherished and alone”. But as an unexpected wish, Steven comes and gives him a young pigeon because he knows the old man loves pigeons so much. They give him a pigeon which also means they give him a gift of love and respect. Moreover, they are giving him a reassurance that they are sympathetic with him about the loneliness he has to suffer, and their promise to stay with him. The old man finally realizes that he cannot keep his beloved granddaughter forever. Comforted by the gift of another young pigeon, “he shut it in a box and took out of his favorite”, and sets his favorite free to fly in a symbolic gesture that proves his painful acceptance of the fact that he must allow Alice the freedom to grow into maturity.

At the end of the story, Alice “was staring at him. She did not smile. She was wide-eyed, and pale in the cold shadow, and he saw the tears run shivering off her face”. She cries when she sees her granddad release his favorite pigeon. She knows his action means he loves her so much, he accepts losing his favorite granddaughter in order for her to be happy with her new life. And more, we do not know if those are tears of joy or sadness or some other feelings.

The story ended with ambiguous conclusion through the tears on Alice ’s face. Those tears can be for anyone in the story depending on the readers’ feeling. Moreover, throughout the story, we have learned that we must let go of what we cannot change and how to accept the reality in order to move on with life.

Flight by Doris Lessing

Essay 2

Giving and Receiving are two category which cannot be lacked one in human daily life separately and in nature circle regulation generally. When giving something, it does not mean you can receive something back immediately, because the receiver does not recognize the abstract gift likes love at the right time you give, and they need time to realize it.

This is told clearly through the love that the old man gives to Alice in the short story “Flight” by Doris Lessing published in 1957, in a collection of short stories entitle “The Habit of Loving”. In the story, the granddad pours out all of his love to his granddaughter and does not want to give her to anyone. The old man’s love is contradictory, he wants to keep his granddaughter for himself, but on the other hand, he has to accept and let her go as a part of circle of life.

There are only three in four characters get name: Alice – the granddaughter, Lucy – Alice ’s mother and Steven – Alice ’s boyfriend, just the main character is nameless and called the old man. Why does it become? Because Doris Lessing would like to tell that he is the symbol of the old generation, who always wants to keep their children in their way, isn’t it?

At the beginning of the story, we can see the old man loves pigeons so much. He puts them in the dovecote on a tall wire-netted shelf, this image seems he does not want to let his granddaughters go; the name “homing pigeons” he calls pigeons expresses his hope, he hopes pigeons always come back with him as their excellent natural instinct of finding the way home.

There is “a young plump-bodied bird”, an embodiment of Alice , which the old man often plays with by calling “Pretty, pretty, pretty.” He keeps and rests it lightly on his chest, tends to hold Alice in his arms and embraces with his love. But the pigeon seems to have not understood and realized his love yet, and replies to him with the “cold coral claws tighten around his finger”, so does Alice . That is why when the old man shouts at her “Think you’re old enough to go courting, hey?”, “Think you want to leave home, hey? Think you can go running around the fields at night?” she replies him with such a rule and mischievous answer: “Any objection?”, “Telling away!” Love, thing that the old man gives Alice , seems cannot be recognized at the moment of giving, but it needs time to be understood for receiving.

The old man just gets the return of his love when receiving a young pigeon from Steven as a nice surprised, Alice tells him: “It’s for you, Granddad. Steven brought it for you.” It tells that the young couple knows the old man loves pigeons so much, meaning he loves Alice so much. They give him a pigeon as a proof of their love and respect to him never changes, and always is with him. And, the old man’s love to Alice gets the return.

Detail that the old man releases his favorite bird and all pigeons one more time shows his giving, but the thing this time is really big and important to him; it has the meaning of accepting the truth of letting Alice go, and only keeps the young couple’s love – the young pigeon. When pigeons “wheeled in a wide circle” and “the garden was a fluster and flurry of returning birds” mean though wherever they fly, they still come back, so does Alice .

At the end of the story, there are two images, the old man’s proud smiling to Alice and Alice ’s tears really make us confuse. He smiles because he knows they still love him, or to tell Alice : you get marriage, but you must not forget me and remember visit me frequently, or any other meaning? And Alice , she cries because of realizing granddad’s love, or because of leaving him?

We do not know the exact answer for these acts. But there is a sure point that both the old man and Alice, the giver and the receiver or vice versa, have gave and received the love from each other. So, Giving and Receiving, can be two but still can be one, Giving is Receiving, it may be you do not receive the same thing at the right moment of giving, but the other thing at the other time. Therefore, let’s Giving and Receiving.                                                 

Flight by Doris Lessing

Essay 3

“Flight” - Some might think of it as birds or an airplane flying, or possibly a series of stairs. However, in the short story Flight, written by Doris Lessing, it is used to develop the message of the granddaughter leaving. Lessing’s use of diction creates a tone and imagery that enhances the setting and characters in the story.

Doris Lessing brings us to an understanding of this pain, but not from the vantage point of the two young sweethearts, or even from that of the parents, but from the viewpoint of a senior, an elder, a grandfather – as he endures the heartache of a kind of bereavement. The last of his many little grand-daughters has fallen in love and is about to marry - flying the nest for good, unlike the doves in his beloved dovecote – over whose flight he has some say.

Lessing uses specific words to illustrate the scenery that helps develop the setting throughout the story. In the first page she starts by using “cold, coral claws” to show what the birds were like. The repeated c’s in the phrase helps increase the sense of coldness and you actually get chills after reading the expression. All through the story Lessing goes into detail to describe the habitat and environment that surrounded the house. Again in the first page she uses words like “dark red soil”, “great dusty clods”, and “rich green grass” so that the readers can imagine for themselves what it looked like. By adding more colorful or descriptive words it becomes more effective because now the reader can visualize it more clearly.

The image of the doves is a powerful one – soft and compliant one minute, yet cold and distant the next. Their soft, warm pillow-like plumage contrasts with the thin, chilling grip of their claws. The grand-father feels …..

“the cold coral claws tighten around his finger”

This is also reminiscent of the youthful dependence of newborns, in the way that their hands instinctively grip an outstretched finger. Indeed grip is an important theme in this short story, for the carrier-pigeons could also represent possession, control or passivity. Power over his birds seems to be the old man’s only consolation as he croons….

“Pretty, pretty, pretty…..” and smoothes the silken plumage of his favorite bird. He is happy for a moment, until he notices in the distance, his golden-haired grand-daughter who is swinging with free abandon on a gate. He knows she is waiting for her true love, the postman’s son.

Annoyed, and perhaps feeling threatened, Grandfather deliberately traps his favorite dove when he senses its thrilling need to take flight. His dominance and control over the dove seems to offer only a momentary salve to his bruised feelings of rejection. After jailing the very thing he is supposed to love in a locked and bolted box, he goes across the red-earth fields to confront his grand-daughter.

“his fingers curling like claws into his palm.”

The golden-haired grand-daughter wrongfoots him by calling his bluff.

Instantly realising he has gone too far, and that something precious has been destroyed between them, the old man relents for a second. But it is too late. The two sweethearts are now too absorbed in their reunion and their delight in each other’s company to even notice the old man’s futile threats. He tramps miserably up to the house.

Inside, a sharp needle, its point held up to the light, reminds us of the sting of his hurt feelings and wounded pride. It is his own daughter’s needle – she is also the girl’s mother, Lucy, and is quietly busy with her needlework. A sense of imperceptibly controlled order permeates the atmosphere as Grandfather ‘snitches’ on the young heroine.

Unfortunately for him, his own hated daughter and her girl have a deep and profound bond – a close and trusting mother/daughter relationship. Amidst an oasis of calm, order, neatly set tea-tables and careful needlework, the girl’s mother gently but firmly humors her old father and lays out his meal. Quietly, she refuses to end the liason and worse, calmly states that she intends for the couple to marry. Her understated and almost imperceptible control of the home and the situation contrasts sharply with the tumultuous and ‘off-the-rails’ emotions of her father.

Bitterly crying at the inevitability of the forthcoming marriage and his own loss, he dries his wet wrinkled face with his handkerchief. Choked with grief, he sees the young sweethearts approach with a gift. The boyfriend has brought him a new pigeon. Half-consoled, but still mistrusting, he now gives the first, boxed pigeon permission to fly.

Symbolism is another technique that's greatly used in "Flight". The most significant symbol in the story is obviously the pigeons. With pigeon caged, he would have total control over it. He wanted to do the same thing with his granddaughter but since he knows he can't do that, he does it to his favourite pigeon. Another symbol in the story is the gate in which the granddaughter was swinging on. That could represent a gateway to new beginnings. Another symbol of a new life is the garden where the couples were talking. At the end, when Steven gave the old man a young pigeon, he finally realises that he could finally release his favourite pigeon and keep the new one to remind him of his last daughter. But he also realised that he could release the new pigeon representing his granddaughter. By releasing the pigeon he finally accepts losing his granddaughter but he also realises that in doing so he is also moving on too.

These Relationship short stories could be for you if you are a parent of teens, an adult daughter coping with the care of elderly parents, a senior reflecting on life, love and age or a reader who enjoys tight, well-woven colorful stories where the depiction of feelings and sensation are classy and understated rather than graphic and hammed-up.

Essay 4

Doris Lessing’s "Flight" is a short story revolving around an old man and his learning of accepting in life. The author, however, does not let her readers know much about the old man, especially in the sphere of physical appearance. Even his name is not known to the readers. Doris Lessing, alternatively, aims to steer her readers to centre on the old man’s inner feelings, i.e. his weird mood and his consequent eccentric behaviors. A close and careful analysis is essential for us to somehow get a reasonable explanation about his eccentricities.

The old man keeps pigeons and considers the dovecote his refuge. These little birds are seemingly his only pleasure in life, for all of his three grand daughters have gone with their husbands, leaving him with his daughter Lucy and the young Alice. Because Alice is the last grand daughter to stay with him, and because she is going to get married, he feels possessive towards her. Never does he want her to leave as do her sisters. He always wants to keep her, to have control on her, and to never let her leave, for fear that she will never come back to him, like the way he prevents his favorite pigeon from flying back to the sky. He keeps on considering Alice as still a child and on objecting her courtship with Steven the postmaster’s son. This possessive and somewhat selfish attitude has led to his unconventional behaviors. Miserably and angrily he shouts at her, asking her old-fashioned phrases stating his objection to her future marriage, and eventually threatening to tell her mother when she disobeys him. How childish it is for such an old man, not to mention his being her grandfather, to behave like this! Moreover, how can a grandfather be jealous of his grand daughter’s boyfriend? Jealousy, possessiveness and selfishness have blinded him!

The old man seems to isolate himself from everyone with his own way of thinking, which is considerably different from that of his daughter Lucy and of course, that of the young Alice. He expects Lucy, his daughter, to be on the same side with him, yet to his grief, the mother shows no objection to her daughter’s forthcoming marriage. He feels lost, and weeps eventually. Those are tears of anger, sadness and even of the fear of loneliness, for Lucy is his only hope to stand to his side. Tears shed on him again, though implicitly depicted, when he watches the young couple “tumbling like puppies on the grass”, after Steven has given him a bird as a gift. These, however, are tears of tolerance and acceptance, as he realizes the fact that Alice needs to fly and have her own life. He cannot keep her beside him forever. Then he comes to a tough decision: releasing his favorite. Though having “clenched in the pain of loss”, he manages to let the bird soar.

Flight is written in third person, but most of the time it is told through the old man’s point of view. Doris makes it this way deliberately for the readers to get the clearest view of the old man’s mood, which keeps shifting from the beginning to the very end of the story. It makes us know how his mood has changed from being very happy with his favorite when the story begins to being extremely angry and resentful when seeing his granddaughter waiting for her husband-to-be. It also helps us know how he feels hurt and how his pride is wounded when everyone is against him. With this skillful technique and her great talent in utilizing symbolism, Doris Lessing has made the story a successful one, which leads readers to explore the world of inside heart feelings.

CAT IN THE RAIN

The sample of emotive prose, which has been chosen for stylistic analysis, is a short story "Cat in the rain" by Ernest Hemingway. It has been chosen because it is suggestive and contains a definite psychological implication. The story is interesting from the point of view of the author's approach to conveying the main idea to the mind of the reader. It is always implicit and remains unspoken. It is the reader himself who should find it behind the simple, at first sight, description of the events.

Hemingway presents only sequence of outward actions and leaves the reader to imagine more than the words themselves can convey. This is characteristic of Hemingway's manner of writing he is famous for.

The author was born in 1899 in Chicago. His family was rich and well provided. His father’s democratic views influenced Earnest greatly, but ignorance of bourgeois society lighted up a protest in the writer. The young man early left his family’s home. Working as a reporter in the newspaper he came in touch with cruelty of American life and decided to go in the Army. Since this time his searches began. He saw lives of different circles, people of different nationalities.

The author let us analyze a lot of characters and events. His literature was his own interests in hunting, love, fishing, military services and so on. Hemingway avoided conventional narration in his stories. He tried to make the reader understand his ideas by sketching in vivid scenes his own experience. The story "Cat in the rain" reflects the writer's approach to life in general. It is about an American couple that is spending their vacations in Italy. The writer leaves the surface comparatively bare: the meaning is plain and simple.

A close study of the story for the purpose of examining its style involves a careful observation and a detailed description of the language phenomena at various levels.

The text of the story is not homogeneous: it is interrupted with the elements of description and the characters’ dialogues. The writer’s strong sense of place is revealed by the use of foreignisms: “Si, si, signora, brutto tempo” and so on. The very structure of the story adds to the effect of implication but the actual meaning of what is going on is not clear at the beginning of the story, as the feelings suggested by the writer are not precisely determined.

The plot of the story is meant to begin before the narration itself starts. There isn't any preface to the story; the reader knows nothing about the couple’s past. Hemingway shows his characters in a certain period of their lives - his favorite device.

The story begins with the description of the hotel where they stayed. At first sight everything seems to be ideal: a cozy room on the second floor, lovely view from the window. And only the description of the rain evokes the mood of sadness in the reader. To bring home to the reader this air of melancholy, which is felt when it is raining, the author uses such stylistic device as parallel constructions: "The rain dripped from the palm trees. The water stood in pools on the gravel paths. The sea broke in a long line in the rain and slipped back down the beach to come up and break again in a long line in the rain ". One can notice that nouns rain, pools, sea belongs to one semantic sphere - the water. This stylistic device is employed by the author to create the atmosphere of inevitability. One cannot hide from the rain. Water is everywhere: it is on the ground, it is pouring from the heavens as though the nature weeps for something. All this pricks the reader's ears and makes him think that something will happen with this American couple. In this abstract the author also resorts to the help of stylistic device known as alliteration, namely the repetition of the sounds -r-and -l-: "Rain dripped from the palm trees, the sea broke in a long line in the rain" which brings the necessary measured rhythm into the utterance. Skillfully combining these three stylistic devices the writer obtains the needed effect: within three sentences he gives an exhaustive picture of one of the melancholic rainy evenings when time goes by so slowly.

It is also the syntax that serves for this purpose.

The author resorts to parallel constructions consisting of short simple sentences to create a downcast atmosphere of dull, monotonous evening and at the same time presentiment and alarming anticipation of something that is likely to happen in the nearest time. In such deadly boring evening the American girl saw a cat in the rain. “The cat sat under the table and tried to make herself so compact that she wouldn't be dripped on”. Suddenly the girl felt strong inexplicable desire to get this cat. May be she just pitied it. It must have been a miserable spectacle: wet, homeless cat crouching under the table in the empty square. The girl decided to go down and get this cat. Here the reader gets acquainted with her husband. He is lying on the bed and reading and he has no desire to go out in such weather for the cat his wife wants so much. Although he proposed it but sooner out of politeness and he did not insist. “Don’t get wet”- he said, but it wasn't a care - he said it just to say something. Later the reader can see that the hotelkeeper gives the girl more attention than her own husband. That's why she liked the owner of the hotel so much. Emphasizing the girl's attitude to the hotel-keeper the author resorts to repetition: "She liked the deadly serious way he received any complains. She liked his dignity. She liked the way he wanted to serve her. She liked the way he felt about being a hotelkeeper. She liked his old, heavy face and big hands ". Unconsciously comparing him with her indifferent husband she liked him because he displayed a kind of attention to her. He always bowed seeing her. His attention can be explained by the fact that he was the owner of the hotel and it was his due to take care of his clients, especially if they were foreigners. He just wanted them to feel comfortable and convenient. He displayed paternal care and attention to her. May be the girl was disposed to the hotelkeeper because he reminded her of her own father who was always kind to her. Anyway, it was so pleasant for the girl to feel sympathy and care. The author says: " The pardon made her feel very small and at the same time really important. She had a momentary feeling of being of supreme importance". That is the reason she liked him. He made her feel important. He listened to her every word and request, and she knew that her every little whim will be fulfilled, and that can not be said about her husband who never worried about her feelings.

Quite the opposite picture the reader can see when the girl went upstairs in her room. The only reaction of her husband was the question if she got the cat. He did not notice her disappointment. Suddenly the girl felt unhappy. Through her sad monologue the writer shows all her dissatisfaction with the life, beginning with the absence of the cat and ending with her short clipped hair. "I get so tired of it“- she says about her hair, but it is not just looking like a boy that she is tired of. She is tired of a boring life, of her indifferent and selfish husband who remains deaf to her despair. She does not say directly that she is not satisfied with her family life. But the reader can see it in the context.

She says: "I want to pull my hair back tight and smooth and make a big knot at the back that I feel. I want to have a kitty to sit on my lap and purr when I stroke her". She wants to have long hair to look solid and respectable. She wants to have children and her own house, which she associates with silver and candles. And the cat in her dreams is a symbol of refuge, something that she corresponds with such notions as home and coziness.

The author underlines the idea of dissatisfaction using repetition. In importunate repetition of the construction "I want" the reader can see the girl's emotional state. This stylistic device discloses her excitement; she is on the verge of hysterics. The emotional tension increases. "And I want to eat at a table with my own silver, and I want candles. And I want it to be spring and I want to brush up my hair out in front of the mirror and I want the kitty and I want some new clothes ". Here is an example of polysyndeton. The abundant use of the conjunction and makes the members of enumeration more conspicuous and also serves to emphasize the girl's state of confusion.

The syntax also contributes to the effect of extreme agitation of the girl. The writer deliberately avoids the use of commas in the girl's speech to show uninterrupted, without any pauses flow of speech, which testifies to her emotional excitement.

This abstract may be regarded as the climax of the story. Here the emotional tension reaches its highest degree. The girl throws out all her discontent, all her negative emotions which she accumulated during her joint life with her husband. Then the peak of the climax comes: "Oh, shut up and get something to read" says her husband. Estrangement grows between two people. The girl feels insulted and stays looking out of the window. It is still raining. The rain is present during the whole narration. It is the silent witness of the running high drama. The rain pierces the plot of the story and has a symbolic meaning. It symbolizes their unfortunate family life.

The girl stubbornly continues: "Anyway I want a cat - she says. -I want a cat. I want a cat now. If I can't have long hair or any fun, I can have a cat". Suddenly she realizes that her marital life was not successful and the cat for her is the only possibility to feel satisfaction. But her husband does not care about it. He even does not listen to her. Probably he never mused over their joint life. To the end of the story the author gratifies the girl's wish and she gets the cat. But it is not that very cat from the street. It is a fat replete Tomcat sent by the hotelkeeper. Then the writer impartially leaves the reader to guess further development of the events. But it is this very device that makes the reader realize that the girl won't be satisfied, that she never be happy with her husband. And this big tortoise-shell cat does not symbolize home and coziness; it won't bring her happiness, sooner it symbolizes missed opportunity.

The main stylistic device the story is built upon is suspense. The author deliberately postpones the denouement keeping the reader in pressing anticipation. Hemingway's wonderful mastery of the language permits him to keep the reader tense till the denouement. Although everything seems to lie on the surface, but indeed the reader should make a great effort to derive the unspoken reference from the description of the facts. Hemingway's scrupulous attention to details permits him to introduce the hidden idea between the lines, without saying it directly. Hemingway's talent lies in deep psychological insight into human nature.

Analysis and symbolism

In "Cat In The Rain", the American girl's husband treats her with a lack of affection, apathy and indifference. When she starts telling him all the things she desires, he just tells her to shut up. She wasn't asking much, simple things, little things, and most of the times little things are what count most. He thinks she's acting like a spoiled child, he doesn't understand her, and he makes no efforts to make her feel loved, wanted, to make her feel like a real woman.

She claims to feel like a boy, because she needs physical and emotional attention, which her husband doesn't provide her.

The hotel keeper was the man who made her feel important, she admires his will to serve her, he gave her the attention she needed and that she's not getting from her husband. In other words, he made her feel like a lady.

Just like the cat, the American girl feels lonely and she needs to be "pet". She hides from the rain, she tries to keep safe and dry. So, in my opinion, the girl is the cat, her husband is the rain that makes her feel unsafe and unfulfilled, and the hotel keeper is the table under which she hides. She needs someone to hold her, to love her and take care of her, and those are qualities that her husband doesn't have.

The Cat in the Rain by Ernest Hemingway is a story of an American couple in Italy. Hemingway portrays this couple as having differences of priorities and also a difference in the amount of attention they give to one another. This story takes place over a short few hours, and even though we only know these characters for a brief period of time, we can predict the type of relationship they have. Most likely if we observed George and his wife a week or so from this day, their conversation would not be about a cat, but the underlying causes would be very similar.

George and his wife (also known as the American girl) are in their hotel room in Italy. George seems very ******* and comfortable sitting on the bed reading. His wife on the other hand gives us the idea that she is very bored, not only in the hotel room, but with their relationship, and herself, her physical appearance especially. Wanting to be anywhere besides stuck in a hotel room do to the rain, the American girl looks out the ******** Outside there is the sea, a public garden, and a war monument. Out in the garden we are also told that there are palm trees and benches for visitors to sit on. The Italians also liked to come and visit this garden because of . . .

The hotel owner then goes on to have a brief conversation with her about the bad weather they are having. By this we again see the hotel owner giving George’s wife the attention she wishes to have from him. George and his wife have forgotten those things, which had brought them together in the first place.

They walk back to the hotel doors and the maid takes down the umbrella as George’s wife heads back up to her room. As soon as his wife says it was gone and follows by complaining about the poor kitty, he picks the book back up again. Anyone that crossed her path every so slightly and recognized her was noticed and greatly appreciated. His wife complains about her shout boyish haircut, and for once George has been giving her his undivided attention. ”

We can see from this conversation that George is used to his wife’s unusualiaty and quite bothersome adventures. George also offers his wife help that he knows she will not take, after all he has not intention of getting off the bed to leave his reading. She goes on talking of having her hair long enough to put up in a bun, while a kitty sits on her lap to stroke. The pardone made her feel very small and at the same time really important. “Excuse me, the padrone asked me to bring this for the Signora,” said the maid. These two need to have time with each

STORY OF AN HOUR

Essay 1

Feeling free is a wonderful sense. Sometimes we feel free after an examination, feel free to leave our house and live independently, or feel free after we repay a debt. However, it sounds odd and shocking that a woman releases a feeling of freedom owing to her husband's death. Why did Mrs. Mallard utter “Free! Body and soul free!” when knowing that Mr. Mallard leaved her forever? Is it an acceptable reaction? Whether does that utterance have any further significance?

Firstly, how could a woman find happiness and freedom out of her husband's death? The story has too few rooms to tell us how the marriage of the Mallards was, but several details in the story can be the evidences. When she was alone in her room after having heard the bad news of her husband's death, the woman sensed “the new spring life” and “the delicious breath of rain”. Then she heard the crying of a peddler, the notes of a distant song, and the twittering of countless sparrows in the eaves. The peddler could go on the street to cry his/her wares only when it stopped raining. The notes of a distant song could reached her only when they were not drowned out by the noise of the rain and the thunder maybe. And the birds would not fly out of their nests to sing in the eaves if the rain was still there. Obviously, everything seemed to revive after the rain; and whether was it the case of Mrs. Mallard? It must be so because the woman now could see “patches of blue sky”, which were an image of hope and joy, “showing here and there through the clouds”, which represented the gloom and the dark of her life, and her fate. The rain and the clouds that derived beautiful things in her life were a strong evidence for the hard time she had experienced. That was the reason why a young woman had a “fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression.” Now the answer was too apparent. It was the repression that made a woman look older than she really was. It was the repression that made this young woman wish not to prolong her life but the day after, with the news of the husband's death, she wished the life would be long! By the way, if we notice how she was addressed, we will see changes in the way that people called her. At first, she was called “Mrs. Mallard” and only after her husband was deemed to be killed, she was called by her name “Louise”. However, she was addressed “wife” when Mr. Millard returned. Was that a woman did not have her own identity a kind of repression? Whether Mr. Mallard intended to abuse his wife or not, whether he was aware that his domination on her wife was a crime, the situation was the same for Mrs. Mallard: she was oppressed. Further, this poor woman was not coerced not only by her husband but also by people around who “believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature.” Mrs. Mallard considered what her husband and other people did with her “no less a crime”, no matter how it was “kind” or “cruel”. For all those reasons, for the happiness of being escaped, the woman uttered “Free! Body and soul free!”

Secondly, the problem here is if the reaction of Mrs. Mallard towards the husband's departure is tolerable. It is necessary to go back to the nineteenth century to find out the answer. American women in the late nineteenth century did not talk openly about sex or even walk down the street while visibly pregnant. The women in her time lived serving their husband and became slaves of their husband and of the matrimony. It was Louise who was unlike many other women at that time (“she did not hear the story as many women have heard the same”); she recognized the real situation where the nineteenth century women were sank in. Bearing such a life, a woman had the right to hope for a life of her own; and it is understandable if a woman considered “self-assertion … as the strongest impulse of her being” rather than love, husband, marriage or stuff like that. If women today are badly treated by their husband or are not satisfied with their marriage life, they can come to women associations for help, they can write for the newspaper, even they can ask for the divorce. Unfortunately, the women at the time of Louise did not have such options; they had to live under the patriarchal dominance forever. Thus, the departure of the husband in this case means the disappearance of sorrow and subjugation. Louise, as far as I am concerned, might not to be happy because of the death of her husband, but because of the death of the intolerable power upon her life. If someone thinks Louise is a bad woman, it is fair to find out what make a woman bad. If Louise had a guilty, it was the guilty of seeking for self-assertion, the guilty of a voice of freedom that was a taboo in the patriarchal dominance in American society.

Finally, “Free! Body and soul free!”, in my opinion, is not just a slogan of Louise's own revolution, but of the struggle against the patriarchal dominance. “The story of an hour” portraits internal changes of a woman in an hour. It was one hour when the woman for the first time lived with happiness and full awareness of life. It was only an hour so that, after that short time, the woman fell down when the husband opened the door. Why was that woman so painful and exhausted in her marriage? Why did that woman die not because her husband died but because she saw him returning? Her death accused the patriarchal dominance of murder. “And yet she had loved him-sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in the face this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!” This sentence says all about the nature of marriage or the nature of the relationship. There cannot be a happy relationship if one of the partners loses her/his freedom. The slogan has created a huge need for identity and individuality. How could a human being impose her/his private will upon another? It is frankly a crime. Anybody has the right to be fee, both body and soul.

All in all, “Free! Body and soul free!” brings up the idea of freedom, identity, and individuality and defy any form of dominance that derives these innate and inevitable rights of women as well as all human beings. However, this utterance was just whispered by Louise and it was the only external evidence of her changes, which showed the limitation of social norms on Mrs. Mallard and other women in America of the nineteenth century.

Essay 2

The first line of the story introduces you to the fact that Mrs. Mallard has some sort of heart trouble.  Although it isn’t made specific what the condition is, being the first sentence in the story, it tells us two things: 1. Her heart condition is important to know about, and 2. The story will most likely return to this specific detail.  In the next few lines, we are told how Mrs. Mallard’s sister and her friend try to gently break the news of her husband’s death so as not to disturb her troubled heart.  This is when we discover that her husband died in a train wreck.  It is very possible that the reason for this specific death used in the story is because Chopin’s father died in a train wreck when she was young.  This could symbolize the lack of lasting male relationships in Chopin’s life.  We also learn that instead of being unable to comprehend the significance of her husband’s death and just being frozen by the unwillingness to accept it like most widows react, Louise immediately cried for her dead husband.  The “wild abandonment” with which Louise wept in her sister’s arms makes you feel as if she just stopped thinking at that moment. Her brain went into auto pilot.

 A majority of the rest of her story takes place in her bed room.  Her fist sight when she walks in is an open window which is very representative of an escape; a fresh start or new beginning.  The second thing we are told she acknowledges is an arm-chair that she slides into. This chair is a symbol for comfort and support for herself.  She didn’t need her sister’s comfort, she needed to look into herself, which is why she didn’t let anyone else follow her into her room.  Louise stares out of this open window for a while watching the trees blowing in the new spring wind, listening to the chirping of birds, and someone in the distance singing a song.  All of these signs of spring also integrate into Louise’s new beginning because Spring  is the representation of new life.

While staring at a patch of fresh blue sky, she stopped thinking about things, she let her body feel what was happening.  So when the story compares her to a child who sobs itself to sleep, it can also be thought of as childlike that she isn’t in a flustered mess about what to do now.  The reasoning is, when children suffer a loss, they know it isn’t good but they don’t become engulfed by grief  like adults do who understand everything. They just go with the flow and keep living life like Louise discovers she can do.  The next thing the story tells us is that Louis began to feel something coming to her and she was waiting for it. It can be assumed that what she was waiting for was the joy she later admits to feeling.  she couldn’t tell what it was at first simply because she couldn’t put it together and obviously, you aren’t going to think you’ll be joyous right away after the death of your husband.

We are told that Louise tried, unsuccessfully to beat back this feeling.  I believe this is because she couldn’t let herself believe that she was happy her husband was dead. Also there is a very good chance that she was just scared of what was about to ‘Possess” her. Louise fighting this feeling was described as being  “as powerless as her two slender white hands would have been.” (paragraph 8)  To me, this line suggest that a woman’ s hands are weak and defenseless; a though most men of Chopin’s time would have agreed with.

 In the paragraph that follows, Louise continuously whispers “free, free”  This is because since her husband died, she can live for herself and only herself.  She is free to do whatever she wants now.  She is free to wake up every morning and not have to makes sure everything she does pleases her husband. Her  warm blood is pulsing throug her body and it makes you picture someone drinking a hot cup of tea.  With every sip you take the warm goes down your throat and coats your whole body to relax you.  Well, this is pretty much what is happening to Louise.  She finally realizes what this feeling means and her excitement causes her blood to pulsate through her. She was no longer scared, she was reawakened.

The joy she feels is described as monstrous.  The reason being because her husband just died and now all she can think about is how much happier she’ll be without him in her life.  She knows her joy is not monstrous.  Besides that fact she is just feeling what her body was urging her to feel.  You are informed that she didn’t hate her husband and indeed would still weep for him at his funeral when she actually saw him in his casket.  I think this is because he did love her, there was just something there that took her spirit away when he was alive. She makes you feel like the husband treated her horribly, but the exact opposite is true. He did in fact love her very much, i believe they just had a difference of oppinion.  It is said that he had to bend  her will to his.  This likely means he was controlling -Not in any violent way- he just called the shots and made all the decisions. His death caused her to open her eyes and realize that it didn’t matter whether your intentions are good or bad, it is still wrong to try to controll people.  No matter what your reasoning is.

In the next paragraph She repeats that she is free, strengthening the fact that she was very displeased with her husbands want to controll her.  Its like Louise is the opposite of Kate, whose husband pretty much let her do whatever she wanted. So again, we have the differences between the relationships of men and women.  Later in the paragraph her sister calls out to her hoping to prevent Louise from making herself ill.  Chopin throws in a little irony in this line because She isn’t making herself ill by being in the room, she is drinking the “elixer of life.” Essentially what this means is that she has discovered herself and feels reborn. More irony appears when you read that she prays for a long happy life today when just yesterday she hoped it wasnt long.  What this means is now that she can choose for herself and doen’t have to live to listen to and please her husband.

It is said that there was a “feverish triumph in her eyes and she carried herself…like a godess of victory.” Louise feels she has won a battle.  She no longer has to be stuck doing what her husband feels fit for her to do. She can do what she wants. That is untill she goes down stairs with her sister, sees her husband not dead, and dies. The doctors said it had been from heart disease. The heart disease where you are enlightened and feel so overjoyed that when what seems to be isn’t true after all, it take all the fight out of your heart. The Story of an Hour is basically a story of a woman who felt controlled that found her freedom only to have it taken away from her by the man who felt it was his right to possess it.

Essay 3

It’s was interesting to see how the main character of the story is referred to as Mrs. Mallard in the story until her sister Josephine calls her by her name, Louise, this to me represents how a woman loses her identity when she gets married. The time of the story suggest that the marriage might have been for monetary comfort, and social status as there was no mention of children throughout the story at all.

 In the very first paragraph the writer lets us know that Mrs. Mallard is afflicted with a heart condition. When I read this I instantly imagined an elderly lady. When you hear of someone have a heart condition you don’t think of a young person. Then in the eight paragraph we are told that Mrs. Mallard was a lady that was young. But then she is also referred to as also having a  fair, calm face whose lines bespoke representation, this to me is a little confusing because as you start to get old you start to get lines in your face or better known as wrinkles’ . So is the writer trying to say that Mrs. Mallard is aging faster than she is and if so why?

What importance does her husband’s friend Richards have in the story besides being there when she is told of her husband’s death? Was he trying to block Mr. Mallard’s view of his wife lying on the floor when he comes through the door? Or was he there to console her as friend only or something else?

When she is told of her husband’s death it doesn’t seem like she took the news like that of someone that has just lost her husband, best friend or even a lover, as the story states she did not hear the news as many women have heard the story with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance.

When she retreats to her room we are told that she could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air. In the street below a peddler was crying his wares. The notes of a distant song which someone was singing reached her faintly, and countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves. This represents the beginning of new life because of the statement all aquiver with the new spring life. When she hears o her husband’s death I believe that she feels the freedom or even the beginning of a new life and that is what the writer is trying to pass along through her writing. I believe that Mrs. Mallard may have been in a marriage that she was not really happy with or even wanted to be in the marriage.

When she started to repeat the words that were parting from her lips “free, free, free” leads me to believe that she was being to realize that she was going to be free woman from the bonds of marriage that she was not to happy to be in.  Mrs. Mallard states that she loved him — sometimes and often she had not.  And when she also started to feel relaxed as the warmed blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body, as she describes that she would weep again when she saw her husband’s kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead. The writer also goes on to say that Mrs. Mallard was able to look beyond the bitter moment for long years that would belong to her and she opened and spread her arms to welcome them.  She was also thinking of the days ahead of her and sais a quick prayer that the life ahead of her might be long. Leads me to believe that Mrs. Mallard was not happy with her marriage as she uses harsh words to describe her husband; fixed, gray and dead hands. It seemed like she was only weeping for a friend and not a husband.

  When Josephine who is her sister begs her to open the door, asks her what she is doing is the first time we find out that Mrs. Mallards first name is Louise. Her sister tells her that she will make herself sick; I would imply that she was thinking that her sister was crying. When Louise replies that she is not going to make herself ill, the writer goes onto say that she is drinking in the very elixir of life through the open window which refers to a medicine for a cure all.

The writer also refers to Mrs. Mallard as goddess of Victory which to me implies that she finally won a battle that she has been fighting for many years. As her sister and she descend down the stairs Richard was waiting for them which, goes back to the first question. Was he there as a friend or something else?

When the door opened the writer refers to Mr. Mallard as a little travel stained, carrying a gripsack and umbrella. To me the writer is referring to him as being exhausted and tired. Question, why was he carrying a carrying a gripsack (suite case) and umbrella, why was he not near the railroad when the disaster happened?

As he entered the room he stood amazed at Josephine’s piercing cry and Richards’s quick motion to try to screen him from the view of his wife. Was Josephine’s piercing cry because Richard came through the door or because of her sister’s death? Also was Richard actually trying to screen him from the view of his wife?

 The last sentence says the doctors said the Louise died of heart disease-of the joy that kills. Did Louise actually die from the site of her husband coming through the door that she was over whelmed to see he was still alive and her fear of living in a marriage that she was not happy with just too much for her or did she die when she had heard that her husband was in a railroad accident and she thought he was dead. Was Louise a ghost throughout the story and was she seeing herself looking out the window in her room? 

Why did the author give the story the name “The Story of an Hour”? My guess would that maybe all of this took place within an hour.