Experience:
After reading Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour", I was very surprised by the tragic ending. I did not expect such a brutal plot twist at the end of the story. However, I realized the story was short, therefore I suspected that it would have a dramatic climax for an ending.
1. The setting of "The Story of an Hour" is in a house (primarily the bedroom), evidently a rather large one that overlooks a square.
2. The major theme of this story is that life is not what it seems to be on the outside. Externally, the Mallard couple may have appeared to be happily-married, yet upon learning of Mr. Mallard's death, Mrs. Mallard feels relieved and liberated. Thus, internal feeling do not always mirror our external lives. Internal feelings and desires are often repressed.
3. The major ironic literary element found in the story is dramatic. Thus, when Mrs. Mallard sees her husband enter the house, she collapses and dies suddenly of a heart attack -- an event that the reader was not expecting, an event that is both tragic and ill-fated.
4. The foreshadowing element found in the story is in the very first paragraph that relates that Mrs. Mallard has a heart condition.
5. The major conflict in the story is internal, as it involves conflicted feelings of Mrs. Mallard upon hearing of her husband's unexpected death in a railroad accident. While she is bereaved, she is later spontaneously overcome by a feeling of freedom, freedom from having to be possessed by a another person for life.
6. This story is told from Mrs. Mallard's point of view, as the reflections and insights are completely hers, and hers alone.
7. I would characterize Mrs. Mallard as a round character because she changes psychologically throughout the story, and dies tragically and unexpectedly at the end of the story.
