Irony In The Plot

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Irony in Kate Chopin

Among the classics of American literature of the 20th century, Kate Chopin is well known. The name Kate Chopin was confirmed, apparently, as the last. This happened relatively recently - in the 70-80s of the XX century. The mere raising of such a high rank in hindsight was not something exceptional for the United States. It's enough to recall the "discovery" by half a century of Herman Melville, previously unrecognized and forgotten by contemporaries, who has become one of the central figures not only in the literature of his time but throughout the development of American literature.

The reliability of descriptions based on direct observations was one of the undoubted advantages of Chopin's first book. Kate Chopin's first novel, At Fault. (1890) talk about the difference between the cultural traditions of Creoles, who also live in the wilderness, and immigrants from the city in the Midwest, whom the Southerners indiscriminately refer to as "Yankees," to characterize the characters and, accordingly, to develop the action.

In many ways, their comparison is far from reality. The citizens are arriving at the South with a consciousness of their superiority. Their portraits are seem in caustic satirical tones. So, the hero's sister, Millicent, who has already engaged in several engagements, shows with her appearance and behavior that she is keeping up with the times. Her new chosen one, the representative of the impoverished old Creole clan Santino, lives in a world of different concepts. The main asset of Gregoire is ancient blood and honor. His wildlife is full of dangers of pleasure primitive - whiskey, dancing, fighting. He is ardent and generous, proud and intolerant; he executes reprisals, ignoring the law; he is uneducated

The caustic irony about the superficially assimilated culture of the "Yankees" northerners, who instantly lose their superiority and feel helpless once in the Creole society, does not lead, as we see, in the novel to the idealization of the latter. Chopin seeks to present both sides objectively, with their advantages and disadvantages. Creoles in her image are not only people who have preserved a higher.

They had sophisticated culture of communication, inaccessible to immigrants from the Midwest, who literally "can neither step nor say," and therefore become so quickly satire, but also cool people morals, not accustomed to reasoning and weighing their words and deeds, not recognizing laws, prone to arbitrariness, often primitive and cruel.

The difference in cultural traditions creates not only dramatic contrast but also is the source of many conflicts of the novel. This contrast takes on the sharpest and most dramatic form in the development of the central conflict. Having failed in a marriage that ended in divorce, the hero of the novel, David Hosmer, decides to start life anew. He is still young and full of energy and, having left his hometown, wants to try his luck in a new place. This is the personal background of the action.

But the novel is also revealed in the background: David is sent to Louisiana by a company that intends to build a sawmill there. He finds a suitable site in possession of Theresa Lafirm and receives a building permit. According to the just observation of the American researcher Lewis Leary, on one level, the novel "can be seen as the history of the industrial North, invading, conquering and defeated by the agrarian South; on the other, it speaks of the individual's right to freedom and its price" (Chopin1). A similar opinion is shared by D. Ridge, for whom this simple storyline means "the invasion of modern industry in the agricultural world of plantations", is a sign of a "radical change", which is why the novel "In error is a very significant book about the social changes that are changing after the Reconstruction South of the world and its impact on the people who live there (Anderson, 2001).

Works Cited

Anderson, M. (2001). Unraveling the Southern Pastoral Tradition: A New Look at Kate

Chopin's" At Fault". The Southern Literary Journal, 34(1), 1-13.

Chopin, Kate. At Fault. Penguin, 2002.