In the short story Story of an Hour by Kate Chopin the character Mrs.

Millard had just received

news that her husband had died. I was convinced that she was devastated and ecstatic all at

the same time, when she heard about the sudden death of her husband. The feeling of grief

for Mrs. Mallard was very apparent in the story because Chopin used keywords such as “

paralyzed inability” and “ storm of grief” to show that this lost took a toll on Mrs. Mallard. Mrs.

Mallard also found joy in the news as well. This made me wonder if Mrs. Mallard had been

abused because she felt at peace with just losing her husband. The phrase “ free, free, free!”

stood out to me because it was almost as if her conscience was telling her she could relax and

that everything was going to be ok . Something that stood out to me was that everyone

assumed Brently was dead, but he ended up living. How did they get the situation all messed up

to say that he was the first one dead? His body clearly wasn’t found so how did they assume

he was even on the train? The most ironic part of the whole story was that Mrs. Mallard had a

heart attack and died even though she thought her husband was dead too.