Essay on Edna’s Suicide in The Awakening

she had to commit suicide. She put an end to her life, but it was actually the

Everyone is vulnerable and susceptible to the usual heartbreak of life. Anne Sexton ' suicide was only one of many who desperately wanted to achieve an unrelenting wave of relief. For these existences, depression is like a war, you either win or die trying (Live or Die). "This is how I want to die"(). Anne Sexton is foretelling her battle with morbid sadness that continues to slowly consume, until the person drowns into a sea of burning anguish."....where one black-haired tree slips up

The ending of Kate Chopin’s The Awakening is both controversial and thought provoking. Many see Edna Pontellier’s suicide as the final stage of her “awakening”, and the only way that she will ever be able to truly be free. Edna’s suicide, however, is nothing more than her final attempt to escape from her life. Edna Pontellier’s life has become too much for her to handle, and by committing suicide she is simply escaping the oppression she feels from her marriage, the suppression she feels from her children, and the failure of her relationship with Robert.

"Suicide, what a terrible concept. There are two types of suicide: physical, and theoretical. Physical suicide is the more commonly heard type of suicide. It entails the person actually, physically killing himself or herself. On the other hand, theoretical suicide is when the person does something that will, in turn, get him or her killed. For example, in “All About Suicide” by Luisa Valenzuela, Ismael, a man that works at a minister’s office, murders the minister, a high-ranking public official. Ismael has been forced to be quiet by the government; therefore he lashes out by killing the minister so that he can reveal the truth about the government. In doing this, Ismael technically “kills himself” because he knows the government

In Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, two people who have the ultimate influence on Edna are Mademoiselle Reisz, and Robert Lebrun.

In the iconic debated novel “The Awakening”, Kate Chopin’s novel takes place in the Victorian Era, which is in the 19th- century, similarly the novel was published in 1899. Edna is depicted as a woman longing for more, a woman who was looking for more than just a life of complacency and living in the eyes of society. The story uses Edna to exemplify the expectations of women during this era. For example, a woman’s expression of independence was considered immoral. Edna was expected to conform to the expectations of society but the story reveals Edna’s desires which longed for independence in a state of societal dominance. Throughout The Awakening, Chopin’s most significant symbol,

Claim: In The Awakening Edna Pontellier's first swim signifies a baptism. Mrs. Pontellier's attitude towards her current life changed dramatically during her time on the island. The most significant shift happened shortly after her solo dip in the ocean, and was just the push needed to help her learn to take control over herself and her future.

She waited for the material pictures which she thought would gather and blaze before her imagination. She waited in vain. She was no pictures of solitude, of hope, of longing, of despair. But the very passions themselves were aroused within her soul, swaying it, lashing it, as if the waves daily beat upon her splendid body. She trembled, she was choking, and the tears blinded her (Chopin 29).

The night before Edna's suicide Chopin wrote that "She did not sleep. She did not go to bed. The lamp sputtered and went out. She was still awake in the morning." (121) Robert C. Evans, the author of "Renewal and Rebirth in Kate Chopin's The Awakening" stated that "her restless night has probably made her less truly awake - less fully alert - than she needs to be at this crucial juncture in her life." The fact that Edna did not sleep supports the idea that she was fatigued, making it possible that Edna succumbed to "physical and mental exhaustion" (Evans) after she swam too far out. In addition to this, before Edna went down to the beach she asked Victor Lebrun "what time will you have dinner?" (123) Then Edna promised him that she would return before dinner time. Edna was making preparations for when she returned from swimming which supports that she did not intentionally go to commit

A different option would have been that Edna decides to live the life of an artist. She could

Though she is in good health, she couldn’t escape her age, and inevitable changes that come with it. She couldn’t escape the fact that he life was passing and there was no going back to change anything. She would no longer be able to have children, and would not be able to re–do her life and have children. She would eventually have to accept her life as it is now, to accept things that have passed, and let them go or keep her pain and sink into an abyss.

Examine the ways in which Chopin reveals and develops the impact of Edna’s initial - awakening - in the central section of the novel. Chopin reveals the impact of Edna’s awakening through a number of different mediums and stylistic devices. Firstly, she uses Edna’s character and her interaction with other people to emphasise the initial development of Edna’s character.

In Emily Dickinson’s “Because I could not stop for Death “ (448), the speaker of the poem is a woman who relates about a situation after her death. The speaker personifies death as a polite and considerate gentleman who takes her in a carriage for a romantic journey; however, at the end of this poem, she finishes her expedition realizing that she has died many years ago.

Although most people would consider suicide as the last resort, if that, but Hamlet on the other hand jumps to the first possible conclusion which he bases solely on his emotions. Hamlet rather than using his logic to think through his rational to commit suicide, he acts solely on his emotional impulse. This action upon emotional impulse can be seen when Hamlet stabs Polonius who was hiding behind the certain. Hamlet’s soliloquy of “To be or not to be…” elaborates on his confusion of how people can bare such large pangs and burdens all throughout life just to end up dead. Hamlet would rather end his own suffering while it had not yet become that terrible.

Emily Dickinson once said, “Dying is a wild night and a new road.” Some people welcome death with open arms while others cower in fear when confronted in the arms of death. Through the use of ambiguity, metaphors, personification and paradoxes Emily Dickinson still gives readers a sense of vagueness on how she feels about dying. Emily Dickinson inventively expresses the nature of death in the poems, “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain (280)”, “I Heard a fly Buzz—When I Died—(465)“ and “Because I could not stop for Death—(712)”.