Term Paper on "Kate Chopin - "The Storm" Like Virtually"

Term Paper 4 pages (1562 words) Sources: 0

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Kate Chopin - "The Storm"

Like virtually all writers of substance and talent, Kate Chopin embraces themes powerfully and poignantly in her work, using well-defined tone, believable settings, strong conflict, and certainly plenty of irony to her advantage in terms of strengthening her characters and presenting compelling narrative and dialogue to her readers. But Chopin's unique ability to create stories that bring romance, forceful passion and real-world sensual action into the reader's consciousness rises above the work of many other celebrated writers. Indeed, Chopin's short story "The Storm" is a story that, in its time shocked, stimulated, and brought social issues into focus with its sexiness, naughtiness and images of adultery. Even today "The Storm" stands out as a sexual awakening that only a few - if any - writers could hope to emulate in terms of its imagery and intensity. Chopin covers a lot of human territory in a few short pages.

What is particularly exciting about the story - beyond what the characters are doing and why - is how the natural world is introduce and blended into the themes and the plot. The thunderstorm and all its fury are intertwined into the story every bit as much as the lovers are intertwined with each other. That literary effort is certainly not by chance, but by a design that Chopin handles brilliantly. The author in fact sets the tone well at the very outset of the story, before there is any hint of sex. Bobinot and his son Bibi decide to respect the storm and stay in the store rather than venture out. After all, the clouds were "somber" and rolling in from the west with "sinister intention" (112). (Was something sinister to happen back at Bobinot's home? Is this foreshadowing of that possibility?) the clouds brought a "sullen, threatening roar" as dad bought a can of shrimps for mom (Calixta), who was supposedly waiting at home for dad and son to return. He is probably buying her a little gift to make up for the fact that he left her there.

While this storm is furiously brewing, Calixta is home and sitting next to the window but "did not notice the approaching storm." The reader can obviously deduce from this scene that while she is "furiously" busy with her sewing machine, her mind is on something else enough so to blot out the storm's approach. But when she stops to mop her sweaty brow and unfasten her "white sacque at the throat" (113) - both images having sensual aspects - she then realizes what is happening in the natural world. She steps outside to remove her husband's clothing from the clothesline and there is Alcee arriving on a horse, someone she hasn't seen in a long while, and once again, nature enters the story to affect characters' movement; this time it affects them in a way that helps move Chopin's story along the road to passion and excitement.

Symbolically, Calixta stands in the rain, which is drenching her with reality - and ironically she is holding her husband's coat - as she surveys the man that five years earlier engaged in sexual intercourse with her. Now, she's a married woman, a bit heftier, but no less in need of sensual fulfillment, the reader is led to believe. Her "blue eyes still retained their melting quality" as the rain "threatened to deluge them"; here, "deluge" is perhaps a foreshadowing that something else will soon deluge them, and on page 114 Calixta wonders if the levee will break, another foreshadowing that something wild is going to be let loose and cascade into this story.

The lightning strikes with "a blinding glare," lighting up the "gray mist"; here, Chopin may have been using "gray mist" as the memory of her long-ago sexual encounter with Alcee and the lightning symbolizes the burst of heat and excitement she feels right at this moment. Calixta staggers backward, stunned by the bolt of lightning, and Alcee catches her; he draws her even closer, "spasmodically," and her "palpitating body" arouses all the "old-time infatuation and desire for her flesh." The author sends a message to the reader's consciousness with the use of the word "flesh," because "flesh" is skin, exposed skin, sexy skin; and the image of a man holding an old flame, coveting carnal relations with that woman, continues the theme of sensuality and enters into the theme of conflict - after all, she's married and has a loving child in her life.

The natural world is everywhere in this story, a powerful literary force: the storm of course kept her husband away and brought her one-time lover into her house and into her arms; and her lips were "...as red and moist as pomegranate seed." Yes, seeds are great imagery in this passage; a man plants his seeds in a woman and of course the seed of an idea or a feeling can be planted and will grow strong given nutrients and fertility. Her lips seemed like they were "free" [e.g., available] to be "tasted, as well as her round, white throat and her whiter breasts" (114). Chopin's story is saturated with "white" images; her "monumental" bed; her blouse; her neck; her "whiter" breasts; the white couch "she lay on"; the "white flame" which "penetrated" in his sensuous "nature." Was this "white" device used so often as perhaps as an ironic touch because her actions would not be "pure" but rather would be adulterous?

Her "flesh" was like a creamy lily that has been invited by the sun (natural world) to share its "breath and perfume" to the "undying life of the world" (114). Once again, the natural world and the human world of sensuality are blended in Chopin's lovely metaphors; Calixta's mouth was not just a human mouth but also "a fountain of delight." Alcee didn't make love to her, "he possessed her" - ownership is more compelling than mere sharing - and together they "swooned" close to the border of reality and "life's mystery." The very human part of being engaged in a passionate sexual tryst does not escape Chopin's narrative; for example, his heart was "beating like a hammer upon her" and her breasts "gave themselves up in quivering ecstasy"; he had "never" reached such sensuous depths, and yet, here he was, totally unexpectedly and simultaneously making wild love to an old flame in her husband's house while rain pounds down outside.

Nature rules in this story (hence the title), of course, and the timing of the sexual moments - carefully manipulated to match the rhythm and the intensity of the wild rainstorm - brings the reader through the paper of the pages and into the heat of the action. At about the time she is stroking his "muscular shoulders" the "growl of the thunder was distant and passing away," and so was the high point of their sexual energy passing away as well. They want to sleep, but wait, the rain was gone and - here is Chopin's brilliant natural world theme revisiting the narrative - "the sun was now turning the glistening green world into a palace of gems" (115). Gems suggests of course diamonds, rubies, and other precious stones, so it is the author's desire to drench the story in images that are rare and precious, just as that love-making scene was rare and precious; albeit a dishonest sexual experience, it was nonetheless beautiful and mysterious.

Shortly after leaving the scene of his carnal episode, Alcee looked back at Calixta from his horse and smiles "with a beaming face" - and she "laughs aloud" with her pretty chin proudly lifted in the air. One assumes this was guiltless and hence, faultless; it was just a moment's dive into a natural human desire, while the natural world pounded… READ MORE

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