After reading the “Story of an Hour”, by Kate Chopin, I think Mrs. Mallard freedom and death was symbolic. I believe that Mrs. Mallard rarely had any freedom in her life since her marriage, and to to find out that she was free for a while only to be denied of her freedom once again, was simply too much for her. Her situation represented women of older times who had restricted freedom, while their husbands can do whatever they want, which is completely unfair. Mrs. Mallard’s happiness and joy should not have been taken away like this and that is what made this story stand out to me.

From the four readings, this particular short story stood out to me the most. Unfortunately in life sometimes we meet the right people at the wrong time, this can cause a tragic love story such as Mrs. Mallard. Given the news that her husband had passed away she wept, but realizing the bigger picture, freedom, she actually seemed pleased with the news she had just received. The title itself is symbolic, because it basically sums up what the story is about. Her joy figuratively lasted an hour, but it literally killed her seeing her husband knocking at her front door. Closing any door of her hope of freedom.

This story is actually interesting… It talks about a woman named Mrs. Mallard who dies shortly after hearing about her husband’s supposed death. This has led her to become depressed, which is common behavior for women who lost their loved ones. Later in the story, Mrs. Mallard is said to have been “possessed” which led to her actual death. Perhaps, this is her mental instability that stems from her depression; she keeps muttering “free” suggesting her change in behavior. I might call her “crazy” considering that she “lost” her husband, became depressed, and suddenly repeat the word “free” as if she has no one to boss her around. This sudden change makes no sense to me because she lost someone that is supposed to be important to her, her husband.

This story has an interesting twist; Mrs. Mallard’s husband, Brentley, is revealed to be alive after the former died from the heart disease. When she died, Brentley just came home. This reminds me of the ending scene in Romeo and Juliet where Romeo drinks the poison and dies before Juliet wakes up. (Romeo thought Juliet was dead.) I gotta say, this story is rather depressing considering the turn in events in The Story of an Hour.

Puertoricanness by Aurora Levins Morales caught my attention because it was the only one that actually had me reading it twice–okay maybe three times. What had me puzzled was the fact I had absolutely no idea who was the narrator in the story. At first by reading the first line “It was Puerto Rico waking up inside her” I was caught by surprised, and then the very next line through me off by saying “Puerto Rico waking her up at 6 AM.” after reading it a couple times i still have no clue who is the narrator and why this story is being told. I wrote side notes asking myself why is the narrator so mean, what race or ethnicity is the person telling the story and why is he/she critiquing the girl for who she is, yes okay she tries to hide her culture but that’s how she feels she is comfortable with her self, and its nice to see how even though she tries so hard to be someone shes not, her true self, her culture, in other words who she really is comes out everyday in all the things that she does. However, I don’t know why the narrator seems to come off as if it annoys him/her that shes refusing to accept who she is. This story actually had me upset because it just left me wondering why the narrator was so offended by this Puerto Rican girl who is having trouble finding out who she really wants to be and who she really is.

This story was interesting because it was about how a woman felt when she finds out that her husband was killed in a train accident. She seems devastated that her husband is dead, and we know that she will cry when she sees him in his coffin. At the end of the story we find out that her husband is still alive and was nowhere near the accident and had not known that there was one. So, he just walks into the house as normal and when his wife sees him, she dies. Most likely from the shock of finding out that he was still alive.

“Happy Endings” didn’t have a happy ending, but it had the truth. It reminded me of a movie I saw recently called “Sliding Doors.” The movie simultaneously shows two paths that a woman ends up taking depending on whether or not she makes it into her train. The ending to both paths were similar but one was much more tragic. Like in this story, there are deaths in each situation that could possible happen, showing the horrible truth about endings.

A girl living in the city, starts longing for the culture she left behind years ago. She misses the way everyone in her culture was like a big family no matter how far apart they are. She decides to no longer fight the idiosyncracies of her culture and make them part of her life again.

This was very interesting to read. It’s different from normal stories since it is a big list of someone’s dialogue, showing a girl how to be a proper lady most likely. While reading this I imagined a woman running around a house, dragging a girl around with her, and showing her how to do things around the house. This reminded me of Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw, since in the play a man takes the challenge of turning a flower girl from the bottom class and making her appear to be of very high class.

The first thing I noticed when I started reading “Girl” is that is one big paragraph, it has semicolons that separate the list of things that the mother tells the daughter and that makes me wonder why the writer arranged the story this way?. The only reason that comes to my head is that she wants the reader to feel overwhelm as the girl in the story who has to listen to all that information, instructions, so that she can be a proper young lady in the culture that the mother would like her to know about.

Kincaid uses particular words to gives us clues about the setting of the story. She uses words like pepper pot, benna, doukona, okra, this words tells us that we are in a Caribbean island especially with benna which is calypso music.

Describing the two characters in the story, the one that speaks the most is the mother or maybe the grandmother. She is strict, bossy, controlling, and I think she worries about what others might say or think about her daughter. She gives her lots instructions for household duties like how to iron clothes, how to sweep, how to set the table, and I think the reason for this is that so her daughter is well prepared for life. Another important reason is culture how to hand down traditions and she does that by giving her an advice “this is how you make a good medicine to throw away a child before it even becomes a child” so this passing down feminine wisdom.

There is a word in the story that recurs three times and that word is “slut” I feel like the daughter is being accuse of being a slut even-dough in the story there is no evidence that supports such an accusation. That makes me ask why the mother is calling her slut. The reason I can come up with is that the mother worries that the daughter turn out to be just like her when she was young, she may be made some mistakes and she doesn’t want her daughter to do the same.

The second character is the girl she only has two lines in the story so it is kind of hard to tell what kind of character she even is however this two lines shows us a few characteristics like she does not have a lot of power in the relationship with her mother. She tries to behave but also protest when call slut “but I don’t sing benna on Sundays at all and never in Sunday school” she seems to be defending herself. She is the recipient of all this rules and instructions and her job is to learned them all because being a woman is going to be really complicated.

In the story the author Kate Chopin emphasize Mrs.Mallard endures after hearing of the death of her husband. Mrs.Mallard is in the hospital with a heart problem. Her sister Josephine had to told her the bad news in a gentle way. Her husband was believed to have died in a railroad disaster. The death of her husband had brought her some relief. Mrs.Mallard loved her husband and was said to hear about his death. At the end Brently Mallard was not kill in the railroad accident and was far from the scene of the accident. The unexpected arrival of Brently cause Mrs.Mallard to have a heart attack that kill her. When he return it was too late Mrs.Mallard was all ready dead of heart disease.

Even though the story is short, the author leave little room for character background information and flashback for the story. When Mrs. Mallard hear the news about her husband accident she when throw all five stage of grief in a few minute. The five stage of grief are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. The author should have done a better job to describe Mrs. Mallard grief to her acceptation of her husband death. The author should have give more details on Mrs. Mallard and Berently life before Berently accident. The author leave the reader with lot’s of question about Berently and Mrs.Mallard life.