Symbolism In The Awakening
Swimming the Sea to Symbolism
To some people swimming is a form of exercise, some may use swimming as a type of stress reliever, and to others it may just be something to do for fun. To Edna Pontellier, it’s a form of awakening, and becoming who she is meant to be. Throughout The Awakening by Kate Chopin, much of a deeper meaning in the story is revealed though a number of important symbols. The symbolic element of swimming and the sea make the connection between Edna’s world and her eventual awakening more vivid and meaningful for the reader. The sea and swimming symbolize freedom and metaphorical death.
Throughout the novel, swimming and the sea symbolize Edna’s longing to be free from society’s expectations of her to be a perfect …show more content…
In Chapter VI, as Edna begins to “awaken” to her position in her world, Chopin juxtaposes a comment about the “voice of the sea” with a paragraph describing the beginnings of a new world, “But the beginning of things, of a world especially, is necessarily vague, tangled, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing. How few of us ever emerge from such beginning! How many souls perish in its tumult!” (25) Chopin didn’t accidentally set Edna’s awakening on the resort of Grand Isle and in the city of New Orleans where the sea is always close at hand. Even as Chopin alludes to the chaotic nature of the sea, she also draws attention to the sea as a source of life and new birth. Edna’s eventual mastery of swimming offers the point that she swims with “newly conquered power” toward “the unlimited in which to lose herself.” The sea has opened up a new expanse of exploration for Edna; an expanse in which ironically, Edna’s “loss” of herself really mars the “gaining” of herself. Throughout the novel, the sea is almost a character in itself; Chopin makes many references to its “voice”, which calls to, and even seduces Edna into her newly “awakened” life. “The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation.”
To some people swimming is a form of exercise, some may use swimming as a type of stress reliever, and to others it may just be something to do for fun. To Edna Pontellier, it’s a form of awakening, and becoming who she is meant to be. Throughout The Awakening by Kate Chopin, much of a deeper meaning in the story is revealed though a number of important symbols. The symbolic element of swimming and the sea make the connection between Edna’s world and her eventual awakening more vivid and meaningful for the reader. The sea and swimming symbolize freedom and metaphorical death.
Throughout the novel, swimming and the sea symbolize Edna’s longing to be free from society’s expectations of her to be a perfect …show more content…
In Chapter VI, as Edna begins to “awaken” to her position in her world, Chopin juxtaposes a comment about the “voice of the sea” with a paragraph describing the beginnings of a new world, “But the beginning of things, of a world especially, is necessarily vague, tangled, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing. How few of us ever emerge from such beginning! How many souls perish in its tumult!” (25) Chopin didn’t accidentally set Edna’s awakening on the resort of Grand Isle and in the city of New Orleans where the sea is always close at hand. Even as Chopin alludes to the chaotic nature of the sea, she also draws attention to the sea as a source of life and new birth. Edna’s eventual mastery of swimming offers the point that she swims with “newly conquered power” toward “the unlimited in which to lose herself.” The sea has opened up a new expanse of exploration for Edna; an expanse in which ironically, Edna’s “loss” of herself really mars the “gaining” of herself. Throughout the novel, the sea is almost a character in itself; Chopin makes many references to its “voice”, which calls to, and even seduces Edna into her newly “awakened” life. “The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation.”