Analysis of The Awakening Essay

In the novel The Awakening, Chopin uses personification, sensory imagery, and irony in order to reveal that the Pontelliers marriage is emotionally unstable, unhealthy, and unhappy.

A way in which Chopin is able to reveal the relationship of Mr. and Mrs. Pontelliers is through personification. It broke like a mournful lullaby upon the night (43-44). Chopin gives the night human like characteristics when stating there was a mournful lullaby. This line reflected Mrs. Pontelliers mood at the time. She is upset because her husband insinuates that she is bad or unfit mother. He reproached his wife with her inattention, her habitual neglect of the children (26-27). Him saying that really upset her and leads us into the next literary device that shows just how unhealthy the relationship is.

Another literary device that Chopin uses in order to reveal Mr. and Mrs. Pontelliers relationship is imagery. The tears came so fast to Mrs. Pontelliers eyes that the damp sleeve of her peignoir no longer served to dry them. She was holding the back of her chair with one hand; her loose sleeve had slipped almost to the shoulder of her uplifted arm. Turning, she thrust her face, steaming and wet, into the bend of her arm, and she went on crying there, not caring any longer to dry her face, her eyes, her arms. She could not have been told why she was crying. Such experiences as the foregoing were not uncommon in her married life (45-51) In a nutshell this quote describes Mrs. Pontelliers reaction to her husbands attitude and words. But at the end the fact that it says Such experiences as the foregoing were not uncommon in her married life, (50-51) just proves how unhealthy the relationship really is. For a husband to behave in such a manner on a regular occasion, and for a wife to see it as normal is completely delusional and dysfunctional. The imagery in the quote helps to make the unhealthy relationship very apparent.

And the last literary device Chopin used to describe the relationship between Mr. and Mrs. Pontelliers was irony. And the ladies, selecting with dainty and discriminating fingers and a little greedily, all declared that Mr. Pontelliers was the best husband in the world. Mrs. Pontelliers was forced to admit she knew of none better (87-90). This is able to show the dysfunctional relationship because understanding the definition of irony (saying something yet meaning another, usually the opposite of what is said) tells the reader that in all honesty Mr. Pontellier is not the best husband around, quite far from it. It shows how unhappy she truly is with in her marriage. Every quote is able to reveal how unhappy Mrs. Patellar is with in her marriage.