KAT3 CH0PiN TH3 STOrY 0F aN H0Ur

Rosie Charles
AP ENG III
The Story of an Hour



Kate Chopin was born in 1851, in St. Louis. She always loved writing but her first novel wasn’t published until she was nearly forty-years old. This novel was called At Fault (1890). The story, The Story of an Hour, was written on April 19th 1894 and was published in Vogue on December 6th of that same year. In this piece of literature, Chopin appeals mainly to the pathos part of the rhetoric triangle.


The first concept of pathos is the most common: imagery. In this short story there are several references to the art of imagery. "The delicious breath of rain was in the air. In the street below a peddler was crying his wares. The notes of a distant song which some one was singing reached her faintly, and countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves." These above sentences portray imagery. By reading these sentences, the reading can better understand the character’s emotions. Also, the outside world is also captured within the emotions.


“As a child who has cried itself to sleep continues to sob in its dreams.”. This quote addresses the concept of a simile. Usually most similes have a similar thing and a contrasting thing. The crying child is compared to the crying adult. They are both crying/sobbing so hard that they are shaking themselves. That is the part that is similar. The contrast part is that the child cries it self to sleep and the fact that it is a child. This is an important figurative language because it make the scene more real and believable.


Lastly is the figurative language that exaggerates. This is called the hyperbole. In this piece of work, a hyperbole isn’t as common as most may think. The one that stood out to me, though, is “Her fancy was funning riot along those days ahead of her.”. This means that her imagination was thinking very quickly about the things she could now do in the later days to come. This is a hyperbole because no one’s fancy (imagination) runs any where. This is also personification because running is a human-like trait that thought cannot do.


I, as a reader, believe that the main purpose and/or message of this short story is to appreciate your freedom whether you are being held down or not. Because you will never know when that freedom may be taken away from you in any form.