Blog 3

The Undertone of the Words and setting

                The short story needs a lot of elements such as setting, characters, point of view, plot, theme, tone, and style to have a good reader reaction. The authors use in different ways these elements to make their tales interesting. Edgar Allan Poe and Kate Chopin is outstanding the use of setting because it is wrapped by the irony tone.  Each story shows the main characters’ necessity of satisfying their desires ironic setting. Chopin relates death with spring and summer, and Poe the carnival party with death.

                Chopin in her story, “The story of an hour”, exposes a woman bored by the marriage routine. Mrs. Mullard is the main character of the story, and she has a heart trouble; as well as, she is noticed by her sister that her husband died. The author prepares the reader with a ironic atmosphere because she said that Mrs. Mullard takes her husband dead in a an uncommon way: “She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister’s arms. When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. She would have no one follow her” (p. 293). This quotati on is telling the reader that something different happen in the grief process because the outline “did not hear the story as many women have heard the same,” this means that something is going to change in the story. It is not yet told, but the female character is not going to feel like the rest of women. 

                The story mention two worrying issues: heart disease and Mr. Mullard’s death.  The reader should imagine a melancholic gloomy setting, but instead of that, Chopin’s narrator describes a very live and enlightened setting. The narrator says that Mrs. Mullard is seated in front of her room’s window looking at the spring mood: “She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air. In the street below a peddler was crying his wares. The notes of a distant son which some one was singing reached her faintly, and countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves” (p. 294). This window represents an open door of a cage. She feels her relationship such as a cage where emotions are died. The reader can believe that a recent widow woman cannot perceive the happiness of the outside mood, but when her husband died, she feels the air of freedom and new life. So the author places the reader in freedom setting that is going to be overshadowed by the narrator word “fearfully”.  That ironic word conduct the reader to a believe in the character’s death. But later the words “free, free, free” show the real feeling of Mrs. Mullard. She is happy because of her husband death represents a new live for her. This female character represents those women who are tired of relationship where there is not enough love, but boredom.

The reader can notice that there are changes of mood in the setting; it is just because the author tries to surprise the reader with the real intention of Mrs. Mullard death. When she believes her husband is dead, she feels the air of freedom and new life, but all the world that she created is demolished by her husband return.  Her heart is broken no because its illness, but because she realizes that she is going to be in the cage, and again she is going to be in the marriage routine.  But the author is so astute that finishes the story with a simple and ironic phrase: “When the doctors came they said she had died of hear disease- of joy that kills” (p. 295). It is ironic that an alive husband kills a woman with freedom illusions of an hour.

On the other hand, Edgar Allan Poe in his short story, “The Cask of Amontillado;” exposes a man with a necessity of revenge. His tale has two characters Montessor and Fortunato. This author uses ironic names that predispose the reader to imagine the fatal ending of Fortunato. He is going to be lucky because he will die alone in the catacombs such as good wine is kept in there. Montessor ‘s evil soul is stronger showed when the first person narrator says: “I continued, as was my wont, to smile in his face, and he did not perceive that my smile now was at the thought of his immolation” (p. 226). By this appeal the author is trying to impress the reader by exposing a character that dialogues with himself and laughing himself by his deadly atrocity. Poe through Montessor  reflects the psycho side of human and his joy face to death.

The setting of dark, alone and wet place helps to involve the reader’s psyche in a fearing atmosphere such as Catacombs.  Rich people of 19 century liked old wines, so he used the Amontillado trick. Catacombs means the space where people was buried. Also the times refers to the carnival time that means “say good bye to meat and death is coming.” Ironically, carnival is such a party, but it means waiting for Jesus death.