I bring you...
A SARCASTIC ANALYSIS OF THE AWAKENING!
Analytical view of The Awakening
The Awakening, a supposedly riveting tale of a woman who finally reconnects with and understands herself, could easily be in the class of Romeo and Juliet. They take forever, have too much flowery language or bad poetry, and have overly dramatic and unnecessary suicides at the end.
The author of this book, Kate Chopin, seems to think overly excessive prose makes a vivid and easy to visualize story. This is not the case-the excessive descriptions simply bore the reader into a stupor. They also tend to overcome the material. For instance, in the sentence “Seating himself in a wicker rocker which was there, he once more applied himself to the task of reading the newspaper.” (Page one.) This sentence is not essential to the setting or the story, and has several things wrong with it. First of all, most people do, in fact, sit on rocking chairs. Second, I find it hard to believe that he would sit on a chair that does not happen to be on a porch with him. Thirdly, a task is generally considered and used as a term to describe something one must do, and I, for one, find that reading the newspaper can be an enjoyable thing. So, a better sentence would be: “Going outside, Mr. Pontillier sat down on a rocker and resumed his reading.”
Mrs. Chopin also seems unaware that a short sentence does not kill anyone. She appears very fond of the comma, semi-colon, and hyphen, using them in such large quantities that the period should almost suffer neglect. Opening to a random page (p. 133), there were 26 hyphens/commas/semi-colons, and only 16 periods. Now, commas can be crucial, but going six lines without a period in a story is one very long, and in this case, dusty, sentence. Just because one knows how to use a semi-colon, doesn’t mean you always should.
Finally, the amount of French in this book was rather confusing. While I am aware that the book was printed in the era where lots of people spoke French because it was the universal language, does not mean it should be there. There are other books from this time period where they were set partly in France, for example, the Scarlet Pimpernel, with far less French. If a character can speak in English, they probably should. New Orleans may have been a French town, but for all the non-French speaking peoples out there, authenticity was not the best way to go. Some of them would actually like to know what was going on.
Analytical view of The Awakening
The Awakening, a supposedly riveting tale of a woman who finally reconnects with and understands herself, could easily be in the class of Romeo and Juliet. They take forever, have too much flowery language or bad poetry, and have overly dramatic and unnecessary suicides at the end.
The author of this book, Kate Chopin, seems to think overly excessive prose makes a vivid and easy to visualize story. This is not the case-the excessive descriptions simply bore the reader into a stupor. They also tend to overcome the material. For instance, in the sentence “Seating himself in a wicker rocker which was there, he once more applied himself to the task of reading the newspaper.” (Page one.) This sentence is not essential to the setting or the story, and has several things wrong with it. First of all, most people do, in fact, sit on rocking chairs. Second, I find it hard to believe that he would sit on a chair that does not happen to be on a porch with him. Thirdly, a task is generally considered and used as a term to describe something one must do, and I, for one, find that reading the newspaper can be an enjoyable thing. So, a better sentence would be: “Going outside, Mr. Pontillier sat down on a rocker and resumed his reading.”
Mrs. Chopin also seems unaware that a short sentence does not kill anyone. She appears very fond of the comma, semi-colon, and hyphen, using them in such large quantities that the period should almost suffer neglect. Opening to a random page (p. 133), there were 26 hyphens/commas/semi-colons, and only 16 periods. Now, commas can be crucial, but going six lines without a period in a story is one very long, and in this case, dusty, sentence. Just because one knows how to use a semi-colon, doesn’t mean you always should.
Finally, the amount of French in this book was rather confusing. While I am aware that the book was printed in the era where lots of people spoke French because it was the universal language, does not mean it should be there. There are other books from this time period where they were set partly in France, for example, the Scarlet Pimpernel, with far less French. If a character can speak in English, they probably should. New Orleans may have been a French town, but for all the non-French speaking peoples out there, authenticity was not the best way to go. Some of them would actually like to know what was going on.