Unit 2 Blog: "Story of an Hour"

Because paragraph five pays a lot of attention to external images and does not seem to move the plot along, the significance of it I think is to add to the setting of the story. I think it's meant to create a certain mood for the story and to make the reader feel like somebody that was actually there during that time was telling them the story directly. I also think that this paragraph was meant to give the reader a vivid reader of the surrounding of Mrs. Mallard.

What I think Chopin means by "suspension of intelligent thought" in paragraph seven is that Mrs. Mallard was simply staring off into space. At this point I don't think she was really thinking about anything at all. I think she was just simply there.

I think there are a couple of different paragraphs where she was in the opposite state of being as "suspension of thought." The paragraph I think is the most opposite from that state of being is paragraph thirteen because Chopin is telling the reader how Mrs. Mallard "knew she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead," and then goes on to say at the end of the paragraph, "And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome." I think this last sentence proves how her thoughts weren't in "suspension" as they were before because she isn't just sitting there staring off into space. At this point she was actually moving around and thinking quite actively.

I think there is a set of passages that epitomizes the significance of the story and they are paragraphs nine, ten, and eleven. I think these three paragraphs prove as perfect examples of the significance because they tell the reader about Mrs. Mallard and how she is seeing this "thing" coming toward her, creeping out of the sky, and as this "thing" was approaching her to possess her she was starting to recognize it. I think she is ultimately crazy and I think these three paragraphs prove it.