By realizing that she cannot share herself with anyone, Edna has to come to terms with her inability to maintain any true relationships; in this sense, she is destined to stand alone in the world (Ringe 586), a position which is suggested by the metaphor of the water. The final episode of the novel is represented by Edna's solitary swim into the emptiness of the Gulf.
The metaphor of the water is relevant to the theme of self-discovery and expression of self. Throughout the novel, the sea becomes a symbol of sexual desire (Spangler 251): "She could see the glint of the moon upon the bay, and could feel the soft, gusty beating of the hot south wind. A subtle current of desire passed through her body, weakening her hold upon the brushes and making her eyes bum" (Chopin 149). Also, water symbolizes freedom and escape; with its vastness and…...

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Works Cited

Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. Kessinger Publishing: 2004.

Brightwell, Gerri "Charting the Nebula: Gender, Language and Power in Kate Chopin's 'The Awakening.'" Women and Language 18.2 (1995): 37-49.

Freeman, Jo. "The Origins of the Women's Liberation Movement." The American Journal of Sociology 78.4 (1973): 792-811.

Griffin Wolff, Cynthia. "Thanatos and Eros: Kate Chopin's the Awakening." American Quarterly 25.4 (Oct., 1973): 449-471.

In service to this "religion," she is expected to offer her entire self. Ultimately, although unintentionally, she quite literally gives her life in this servitude.
In The Awakening, religion also plays an important role in the female self-concept. Adele for example specifically refers to the Bible when attempting to convince Edna of the merits of self-sacrifice for husband and children. However, it is also true that Adele has no concept of the inner self and therefore experiences no sense of sacrifice when denying her own desires in favor of those her family may have.

In this way, the religious force, and particularly Christianity, serves as an oppressive power, in contrast to the force of freedom it claims to be. eligion can also be seen from a wider point-of-view when considered in terms of the authors' intention in both respective cases. Jason Hartford (435) for example consider religion in terms of Flaubert's…...

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References

Primary sources

Flaubert, Gustave Madame Bovary. Ed. And trans. Paul De Man. New York:

W.W. Norton, 1965.

Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. A Norton Critical Edition. Ed. Margo Culley. 2nd ed.

Edna develops an independence to the point that this final tug of society makes the two completely incompatible; Robert is gone when she returns, and Edna drowns herself, ignoring Adele's dying admonition to "Think of the children!'" (289). One woman dies in grace, the other in despair.
The two ways in which the women relate to their families are hugely important in defining the two characters and thus illustrating the theme of the novel. Madame Ratignolle is a born mother and wife; she dotes on her children and worships her husband, but does not seem at all vapid. Rather, she does these things because she truly enjoys them and finds them rewarding. The difference in the Pontellier household is made palpable when Adele suggests that Leonce and Edna might be more "united" if he stayed home more in the evenings, to which Edna reacts blankly, saying "e wouldn't have anything…...

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Works Cited

Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. New York: Herbert S. Stone & Co, 1899.

Chopin's The Awakening
Edna Pontellier's Quest for Freedom in Chopin's the Awakening

Kate Chopin's The Awakening revolves around Edna Pontellier and her quest for self-discovery. During the course of her journey, Edna breaks away from the socially acceptable behavior expected of women at the time. As a woman, Edna was expected to marry "and take part in [her] husband's interests and business" (Appell). Additionally, "women were not…allowed to be educated or gain knowledge outside of the home because it was a man's world" (Appell). Chopin's characterization of Edna's awakening is somewhat reminiscent of the freedoms she personally experienced while growing up alongside strong, independent, and trailblazing women who continuously defied conventions and did not let society dictate what they could or could not do (yatt). The Awakening takes part during the course of two consecutive summers in which Edna exhibits cyclical tendencies. Through her various rebellious, albeit unadvised actions, Edna finds social,…...

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Works Cited

Appell, Felicia. "Victorian Ideals: The Influence of Society's Ideals on Victorian

Relationships." McKendree University. Web. 2 January 2013.

Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. The Awakening and Selected Short Stories. A Penn State

Electronic Classics Series Publication. Web. 2 January 2013.

protagonist of Kate Chopin's book, The Awakening, Edna Pontellier, starts a one way voyage to find herself. A young wife and mother living in New Orleans at the end of the nineteenth century makes surprising discoveries about who she is, abut what is essential and what is not. As she explains to her friend, Mrs. Ratignolle, there are things that are far more important to someone than one's own life. The finding of her true self will cost Edna one "unessential" possession in the end: her life, but she proved the trip worth the cost. She chooses to distance herself from everything she knew before in order to gain the clarity and the objectivity she needed to explore the new world within.
Although, Edna's marriage to Leonce Pontellier was a conflict in itself, it was nothing out of the ordinary for the first six years. A young girl who dreams…...

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Bibliography

Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. Herbert S. Stone & Company Chicago & New York. 1899

Color Purple- Film and Book
The Color Purple is a deeply through-provoking and highly engrossing tale of three black women who use their personal strength to transform their lives. Alice Walker's work was published in 1982 and it inspired Steven Spielberg so much that he began working on its film version as soon as the novel won accolades for its brilliant storyline and powerful narrative. However the movie, though it won eleven Oscar nominations, wasn't as compelling as the novel. The major difference lied in the presentation of the horrifying stories of three leading female characters. While Walker concentrated on accentuation of their bleak and ugly world, Spielberg focused more on the fairytale aspect of their tales and the fact that they eventually overpowered their helplessness. The opening scenes can serve as an excellent example of the difference of approach that set the book apart. The first few pages concentrate…...

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References

Bronte, Charlotte: Jane Eyre, Penguin USA (Paper); Reprint edition (September 1996)

Alice Walker, The Color Purple, Pocket Books; Reissue edition (May 1990)

Chopin Kate: The Awakening and selected stories: Penguin USA 1986

Awakenings - Dr. Oliver Sack Film
Based on a true story about Dr. Oliver Sack's work in the 1960s, Penny Marshall's film Awakenings elucidates the challenges of clinical experimental psychology. Dr. Sack's fictionalized character, Dr. Malcolm Sayer had worked as a laboratory researcher until he was forced to accept a new position treating catatonic patients at a Bronx mental institution. His relative inexperience in a clinical setting could be partly to blame for his somewhat idealistic approach to treating the patients under his care. In any case, Sayer attends a conference about new treatments for Parkinson's disease. When he hears about the revolutionary drug "L-Dopa," Sayer imagines it might offer a viable treatment for the catatonic patients on his ward, whose symptoms result from their having childhood encephalitis. After applying to the hospital medical board for approval, Sayer is permitted to test the drug on one patient. In addition to the…...

This suggests that it is an intellectual understanding of her friend's beatings and not a true emotional empathy that she is after. Though the scene is most definitely tragic, if it is approached with the same intellectual curiosity that the two adolescents bring to it can only be seen as an episode of horribly dark humor. The fact that endla can be so foolish as to desire an intellectual understanding of child abuse shows her complete lack of a true appreciation for the situation, and is thus a comic -- not necessarily humorous, but comical nonetheless -- situation.
The end of a play is also one way to determine if a particular work is a comedy or a tragedy. The fact that Moritz and endla are both unnecessarily dead at the end of the play at first seems to suggest a tragedy, as does Melchior's expulsion. hen the characters end…...

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Work Cited

Wedekind, Frank. Spring Awakening, Edward Bond, trans. London: Methuen Drama, 1980.

The wildly prolific Joyce Carol Oates also delves into the role of modern women in her fiction writing, although a quick review of her works spanning the course of the 20th and 21st centuries, suggests it is more difficult to draw as direct a connection between Oates' major works and biography than it is with Chopin. However, like Mrs. Mallard of "The Story of an Hour" briefly delights in a fantasy coming to life, only to find her hopes dashed when the promise of freedom is taken away, the heroine Connie of "here are you going, where have you been," finds her fantasy of being seductive and more beautiful than her conventional mother and sister to be far different than she realizes in reality. In Oates, much more explicitly than in Chopin, the trap of femininity 'used' as a vehicle of liberation for the teenage Connie becomes a lie, as…...

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Works Cited

Chopin, Kate. "The Story of an Hour." PBS Electronic Library. 6 Oct 2008.  http://www.pbs.org/katechopin/library/storyofanhour.html 

Johnson, Greg. "A Brief Biography: Joyce Carol Oates." From a Reader's Guide to the Recent

Novels of Joyce Carol Oates. 1996. 6 Oct 2008.  http://jco.usfca.edu/life/index.html 

Kate Chopin: Biography." The Kate Chopin International Society. 6 Oct 2008.  http://www.katechopin.org/biography.shtml

Papyri
Awakening Osiris: The Egyptian ook of the Dead

The Egyptian ook of the Dead is a western title for an ancient collection of Egyptian manuscripts, the majority of which were funerary in nature. These collected writings have also been referred to as the Egyptian ible or identified by the names of the scribes who penned them. The Papyrus of Ani comprises the most significant contribution to these texts, though there are some other minor sources which are often included. In the original languages, these works were more accurately entitled the ooks of Coming Forth y Day. One of the greatest challenges to English-language speakers when confronting all the great scriptures is the language gap. Unless one has the time and inclination to learn Arabic, Hindi, Hebrew, Greek -- or in this case, Egyptian Heiroglyphs -- it becomes necessary to read the scriptures in translation. The farther removed one's own culture, and…...

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Bibliography

Budge, E.A. Wallis et al. (Trans.) The Egyptian Book of the Dead: The Papyrus of Ani.  http://www.touregypt.net/bkofdead.htm 

Ellis, Normandi (Trans.). Awakening Osiris: The Egyptian Book of the Dead. Grand Rapids, MI: Phanes Press, 1988.

Seawright, Caroline. "The Book of the Dead" Tour Egypt Feature.  http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/bod.htm 

Sophia Society for Philosophy. "Genetico-cognitive features of the ante-rational mind." Sophia Society for Philosophy.  http://www.maat.sofiatopia.org/cognition.htm

olves: The sexual awakening of Little Red
"The Company of olves" by Angela Carter depicts the fairy tale of Little Red Riding Hood as a sexual awakening for the young woman, Little Red. [THESIS]. This can be seen in how the wolf is sexualized and depicted as a vibrant, attractive man in the eyes of Little Red

"He strips off his shirt. His skin is the color and texture of vellum. A crisp strip of hair runs down his belly, his nipples are ripe and dark as poison fruit but he's so thin you could count the ribs under his skin if only he'd give you the time…His genitals, huge. Ah! Huge!" (Carter 317). The story retains the general structure of the fairy tale until the end, but the descriptions of Little Red and the wolf give the story an additional sexual relevance.

For example, in the above-cited quotation, the wolf's true,…...

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Work Cited

Carter, Angela. "The Company of Wolves." From The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories.

New York: Penguin, 1990.

Nora's Awakening #2
Lori D'Angelo

Nora's Awakening

A Doll's House by Henrick Ibsen is a 1879 play that provides insight into the life of a women during the 19th century. While the play takes place over a short period time, it is during this time that Nora Helmer realizes that she is unhappy, and she needs to break away from her husband. Nora feels as though she was never given the opportunity to live the life she wanted, and after seeing what her husband, Torvald, thinks of Krogstad, a man who has committed the same crimes Nora has in order to save Torvald, she can no longer keep her thoughts to herself and resolves to stop being objectified by all the men in her life. In the play, the turning point comes in Act III when Nora compares herself to a doll and explains how she has always been treated as an object…...

We must be willing to fail, to falter, to suffer, in order to become greater versions of ourselves. Sometimes, being shown lesser versions of ourselves can be the key to this personal evolution.
And perhaps most importantly, we must recognize that this personal evolution does not occur in a vacuum. To the contrary, we improve ourselves only if we improve the value we represent for the whole of humanity, in whatever modest capacity this may be possible. Here, we are driven by the idea that "a human being is a part of a whole, called by us the 'universe', a part limited in time and space."

This is perhaps the unifying principle in our discussion. The openness which is a recurrent theme here denotes especially the imperative to remain open to one's fellow man. Nothing that we do occurs independently of the needs and wishes of family, friends, communities, societies, civilizations…...

Similarly, Mademoiselle Reisz fascinates and inspires Edna beyond words, yet Edna cannot possibly duplicate her life. Adele, kind and sympathetic as she is, in conversation with Edna, still cannot even begin to understand Edna's deep yearnings for freedom and independence; for she shares none of them. Even the longed-for Robert, upon returning from a protracted trip to Mexico, tells Edna that his own view of their future life together (should they ever have one) would be heartbreakingly similar to her present life with her husband.
Within Kate Chopin's the Awakening, noises, conversations (pleasant and unpleasant) laughter, sobbing, and sounds associated with eating and drinking, fill the novel. Symbolically, many of these, such as Edna's breaking of the glass vase in frustration near the beginning of the story, underscore the essential action, as well as the feelings of the main character. Other sounds, such as party chatter at various Creole gatherings…...

As such, she fails to address the central problem of feminism in the Pontellier perspective, namely the impossibility of female individuality and independence in a patriarchal world. It is only in isolation that Edna can find any happiness, and she must make this isolation more and more complete in order to maintain her happiness, as the patriarchy has a means of encroaching on all populated areas, and Wollstonecraft's feminism does not offer an alternative to this need to escape humanity.
A final snort of disgust might be distinctly heard from Edna Pontellier upon her reading of this line of Wollstonecraft's, afterwards she might likely have flung the text aside (or into the fireplace, depending on the season): "Pleasure is the business of woman's life, according to the present modification of society" (ch. 4, par. 10). What Wollstonecraft means is that women are thought to be so fragile, so emotional, and…...

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References

Chopin, Kate. The Awakening. 1899. University of Virginia E-Text Center. Accessed 28 May 2012.  http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/ChoAwak.html 

Hammer, Colleen. To Be Equal or Not to Be Equal: The Struggle for Women's Rights as Argued by Mary Wollstonecraft and Christina Rossetti. UCC [working paper].

Heilmann, Ann. The Awakening and New Woman cition.

Horner, Avril. Kate Chopin, choice and modernism.

Topic 1: The Metamorphosis of Meaning

Examine the transformative journey of an individual who navigated a life devoid of purpose to one filled with deep meaning and fulfillment. Explore the catalysts that ignited this change, the challenges encountered, and the profound lessons learned along the way.

Topic 2: The Awakening from Limbo

Analyze the psychological and emotional experiences of someone who spent years in a state of apathy and purposelessness. Discuss the epiphany that jolted them awake, the fear and uncertainty that followed, and the strategies they employed to create a meaningful life.

Topic 3: The Catalyst of Adversity

Investigate the role that adversity can....

Realism in Civil War Literature

The Civil War, a tumultuous and pivotal event in American history, left an enduring imprint on the nation's literary landscape. Realist writers of the period, such as Ambrose Bierce, Stephen Crane, and Kate Chopin, sought to capture the complexities and hardships of the war era with unflinching honesty and gritty detail.

Unvarnished Depictions of War's Horrors

Realism in Civil War literature was characterized by its unflinching portrayal of war's horrors. In Ambrose Bierce's "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," the reader witnesses the grim fate of a Confederate soldier about to be hanged. Bierce vividly describes the man's....