"The Story of an Hour"

"The Story of an Hour" tells the story of Mrs. Mallard's experience in learning of the death of her husband, Brently Mallard. Paragraph 5 is detailed in explaining the views outside her window as she encloses herself in her room. Although this description does not move the plot along, I feel that it does bring something to the story. This shows that although Josephine Mallard sits in a frame of mind described as, "suspension of intelligent thought," the world was still moving around her. There were events taking place. The beauty and the bustle of the outside world does not end, even as a person faces intense emotional grief, the kind of grief that can suspend all rational thought processes. The opposite of this state of mind occurs during Mrs. Mallard's revelation in paragraph 19. She, "breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday that she had thought with a shudder that life might be long." I feel this paragraph is the epitome of the story. Life can change overnight; life can change in mere minutes. The world continues on, as do we.