8/19 Hemingway's Chapter 5 & Chopin's The Story of An Hour

This is a comparison of them. I will do so based upon details, characters, setting and narration. They both write about death in the cabinet ministers' execution and Mrs. Millard's unfortunate demise.

Clearly, a power struggle is occurring. The one between the cabinet ministers and soldiers is probably political, while Mrs. Millard's is with heart disease. And a desperate need for freedom. Similarly, the cabinet ministers wanted to escape the soldiers as much as Mrs. Millard did her husband. She thought "there would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending her in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow creature."

They are tales of man's inhumanity to man. Mrs. Millard would agree with me because she felt that intentions were irrelevant. Hemingway summarized his story in the first two sentences: "An execution occurred. They shot six cabinet ministers at half-past six in the morning against the wall of a hospital." This sounds like a news report. I guess it was the correspondent in him.

The gaps in the story leave readers wondering what happened. It is very detailed. However, most are insignificant when considering the crime's nature: "There were pools of water in the courtyard, there were dead leaves on the pavement of the courtyard. It rained hard." I bet Hemingway is trying to tell us that it is fall by mentioning the dead leaves on the ground.

It continues: "The shutters on the hospital were nailed shut." If combined with the fact that the surrounding area was deserted was deserted and the dead leaves on the ground you could infer it was abandoned. It was very convenient to hold the ministers there. The fact that one of them had Typhoid Fever was unimportant. How long were the ministers captives? Was the sick one well before his incarceration?

The characters and settings are very clearly detailed. we know the who, what, where and when. But not why. This makes the story incomplete, especially when compounded with the many gaps and irrelevant details, even though the tones are fast-paced/violent. The Story of an Hour is much better over all because it is engrossing and captures the readers' attention as it progresses.

Similarly, Mrs. Millard had heart disease, was virtually bed-ridden and an emotional victim. The was written when wives were their husbands' property. And their survival depended totally on their husbands. She did not love her husband, and as the struggle went on she wanted to take charge of her own life, but found it impossible while married. Divorce was virtually unheard of then.

Yet ironically, when she heard that her husband was dead she could not believe it. "She did not hear the story as many women have...with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance. She wept at once with wild abandonment." Wanting to be alone for a while she went to her room. While there she started to feel all the beauty that exists. Her freedom was slowly unraveling: "She could see the open square before her house, the tops of trees that were alive with a new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air. In the street below a peddler was carrying his waves. The notes of a distant song which someone was singing reached her faintly, and countless sparrows were twittering in the caves." It is as if all he senses came alive. She could not believe that she was free. "Free. Body and soul free," she whispered. "Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her. It was impossible for her to picture the many days-all sorts of days that would be her own. She breathes a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday that she had thought with a shudder that life might be long." For the first time in a very long time she was Louise, not Mrs. Millard. This further illustrated that she was rediscovering her own identity. Chopin said that she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of victory. And felt proud to have won the war...

Unfortunately for her, he was still alive. And her victory/sole reason for living was snatched from her. Then like a bullet to her sick heart, the vision vanishing killed her.

Both stories were very detailed. Chapter 5 was incomplete. Many of the details were irrelevant to the story. I felt like a detective discerning clues about the season, local, etc. The Story of An Hour had much less gaps. It had a beginning, middle and end. The details were relevant to main events. The tone is sad and the pace is elastic. The events go back and forth, changing very quickly: one minute Mrs. Millard is a sick captive and the next she is ecstatic over being free. Then suddenly she is imprisoned again, and lastly dead. Sadly, whenever there is a cry for freedom death is always there to answer it.