Please read the following two stories, Chopin's The Story of an Hour and Adichie's How Did you Feel About it. Then answer the eight questions for both stories - you will have sixteen responses in total. You will need to read about the five elements of literary explication (in my secondary post) to answer the questions.Separately, please bring to class your responses for the six questions I posted on No One's a Mystery.Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband's death.It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences; veiled hints that revealed in half concealing. Her husband's friend Richards was there, too, near her. It was he who had been in the newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with Brently Mallard's name leading the list of "killed." He had only taken the time to assure himself of its truth by a second telegram, and had hastened to forestall any less careful, less tender friend in bearing the sad message.She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister's arms. When the storm of grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. She would have no one follow her.There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into this she sank, pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul.She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air. In the street below a peddler was crying his wares. The notes of a distant song which some one was singing reached her faintly, and countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves.There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that had met and piled one above the other in the west facing her window.She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite motionless, except when a sob came up into her throat and shook her, as a child who has cried itself to sleep continues to sob in its dreams.She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a certain strength. But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of intelligent thought.There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She did not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name. But she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air.Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. She was beginning to recognize this thing that was approaching to possess her, and she was striving to beat it back with her will--as powerless as her two white slender hands would have been. When she abandoned herself a little whispered word escaped her slightly parted lips. She said it over and over under hte breath: "free, free, free!" The vacant stare and the look of terror that had followed it went from her eyes. They stayed keen and bright. Her pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body.She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that held her. A clear and exalted perception enabled her to dismiss the suggestion as trivial. She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and dead. But she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome.There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination.And yet she had loved him--sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in the face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!"Free! Body and soul free!" she kept whispering.Josephine was kneeling before the closed door with her lips to the keyhold, imploring for admission. "Louise, open the door! I beg; open the door--you will make yourself ill. What are you doing, Louise? For heaven's sake open the door.""Go away. I am not making myself ill." No; she was drinking in a very elixir of life through that open window.Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her. Spring days, and summer days, and all sorts of days that would be her own. She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long.She arose at length and opened the door to her sister's importunities. There was a feverish triumph in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory. She clasped her sister's waist, and together they descended the stairs. Richards stood waiting for them at the bottom.Some one was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard who entered, a little travel-stained, composedly carrying his grip-sack and umbrella. He had been far from the scene of the accident, and did not even know there had been one. He stood amazed at Josephine's piercing cry; at Richards' quick motion to screen him from the view of his wife.When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease--of the joy that kills. How Did You Feel About It?In the quiet carriage we sat angled away from each other. We always rode the quiet carriage, but today it felt like a gift: a reason not to talk. Jonathan in his maroon sweater cradling his iPad. The sunlight weak, the morning uncertain. I was staring at the magazine in my hand, deeply breathing in and out, a willed and deliberate breathing, aware of itself. Breathe – such an easy target for scorn, so often summoned as panacea for our modern ills. But it worked. It helped push away my sense of engulfing tedium, even if only for brief moments. How does this happen? How do you wake up one morning and begin to question your life?Jonathan shifted on his seat. I kept my eyes on the magazine, to discourage any whispered conversation."Something has been on your mind," he told me that morning as he buttered a piece of toast. I kept silent, slowly spooning muesli into my mouth, and he said nothing more. Why hadn't he asked me a question? Why hadn't he asked "What is on your mind?" A question was braver than a statement. A question forced a reckoning. But Jonathan avoided direct questions because they had in them an element of confrontation. His dislike of confrontation I had once found endearing. It made him a person who thrived on peace, and so a life with him would be a kind of seamless happiness.When he did ask questions, they seemed always to seek reassurance rather than information. His first question to me, shortly after we met years ago, was about servants. I had mentioned the drivers and househelps of my Lagos childhood, and his question followed: How did you feel about it all? Because servants were foreign to him, a relationship with them had become a matter of morality. He told me that when he first could afford weekly Polish cleaners for his London flat, he had hidden in the spare room while they cleaned, so ashamed was he of paying somebody to scrub his toilet.For Jonathan to ask "How did you feel about it all?" was not really about how I felt, but about a moral code I was supposed to follow. I was to say: "I felt terrible. I worried about their welfare." But the truth was I felt nothing because it was the life I knew. Had he asked me "What is on your mind?" that morning and had I said "I am wondering if this is the life I want, and what I have missed out on in the years we've been together," he would have no answer for me. Because I was not supposed to think such things. It was unfair to do so. Wrong. That we sometimes think what we are not supposed to, and feel what we wish we did not, was something Jonathan was unable to grasp.From across the aisle came a loud voice. An elderly American man talking on the phone, his accent distinct, face burnt red as though fresh from a holiday. In the clammy silence of the carriage, his words sounded unnatural, as though coming from somewhere else. Jonathan shifted and sighed, then shifted again. A man turned and rolled his eyes. A woman shook her head.Why didn't one of them tell the American that this was the quiet carriage? I guessed, from a bluffness in his manner, that he did not know. Jonathan was seated closest to the American, he had only to reach out across the aisle and gesture to the man and in his modulated voice say something. But he would not. Jonathan would shift and sigh and shift again but would say nothing. I once thought this sweet. I would have teased him about the English ritual of passive aggression, so easily inflamed by the presence of an American.The quirks that had first charmed me about Jonathan were suddenly scourges designed for my irritation. His sensitivity was weakness. What I thought his innocence was now self-indulgent naiveté. Nothing had happened. Jonathan had done nothing wrong, I had not met anyone else. It was merely that one morning I woke up and felt undone. I began to struggle to shrug off a terrifying sense of something wasted, a colossal waste, leaving a dull mourning for things gone forever.The train stopped at a station and I watched a couple come into the carriage. My interest in them was instant. They attracted attention: the man looked Japanese, with an angular arresting face and long black hair that gave him a cultivated alternative air. The woman looked Italian, tanned, her kohl eyeliner slightly smudged with the right amount of effortlessness. A throwaway kind of glamour emanated from them, their stylish clothes fit loosely but deliberately, their bags looked expensive. They slid in opposite us, and I felt an excitement I did not understand, as though their choosing to sit with us said something desirable about us, about me. A subtle perfume seemed to come from both of them. They wore the same scent. This impressed me for reasons unknown to me. Her purse on the table, thick leather, an elegant metal monogram. They pulsed with warmth and vitality. Jonathan avoided looking up. I smiled at them. She held my gaze for a few seconds, her expression open and curious and almost eager. Eager for what?Both their hands were below the table. Were they holding hands? They seemed like people who truly felt things, who touched their emotions. Their lives were lit by an inner incandescence. I tried to imagine their home, full of colour, intense flowers in asymmetrical vases, unapologetic paintings, perhaps leaning rather than hung on the walls.They probably said things to each other in bed, and made sounds for each other, with no selfconsciousness. Her arms would be thrown up above her head. His body relaxed in its sensuality. They had brief intense fights, about their jealousy and their drinking, and they shouted at each other and then reconciled with passion. I felt suddenly that my life with Jonathan, with its contentment, its pacifism, was in fact the absence of true feeling.The woman leaned in and asked in an exaggerated whisper: "How long have you been married?"I stared at her. Jonathan looked up then and I imagined him, later, back home, saying how outrageous it was for a complete stranger to ask such a personal question.It seemed perfectly normal to me to be asked this by this attractive woman on a train. The man was watching me, too, his expression like hers. They were similar even in their expectations."Too long," I said, surprising myself, wanting to match her confident and playful air. Because I felt nervous, my voice was louder than I wanted it to be, especially for the quiet carriage.Jonathan was looking at me. I expected the woman to smile but to my astonishment her face clouded over, into whimsical sadness."How did you know we were married?" Jonathan asked the woman and I turned to him in surprise. Jonathan talking, Jonathan asking a direct question, and not in that over-done whisper meant to show that he was following the quiet-carriage rules.She shrugged, gestured towards us both, as though to say that it was obvious."Because we don't talk?" I wanted to quip, to keep them interested in me, and to halt my rising panicky discomfort."Must be nice to be so comfortable with each other," the man said, his face similarly clouded as the woman's.I understood then what that expression was. Longing. They admired us.This at first seemed to me so incongruous that I nearly laughed, and then it took on a grave weight that suddenly made me feel so much smaller, almost weightless.Did they admire us because they were themselves grieving something? Had I misread them from the beginning?"He's your best friend," the man said to me, gesturing toward Jonathan, and then glanced at the woman, as though to conclude an unfinished unspoken point. "And she's your best friend. You tell each other the truth. You trust each other."A long pause. Jonathan, I sensed, was done with these strange people. He went back to his iPad. Tears were running down the man's face. The woman's eyes were large and liquid. I felt trapped, confused about them and yet also responsible for them."Yes," I said finally.I remembered how I would lie next to Jonathan, watching him sleep, his lips slightly parted, and how I would touch his neck gently and think 'May nothing ever happen to him.' I had never told him how often I did that.Full plot analysis: What happens at the beginning (exposition)? Where does the turn occur (rising action)? What’s the big reveal (climax)? What’s the resolution?Setting: Indicate the time and location. How is the setting significant to the story?Character Description: Who are they and what do we know about them?Symbols: List some of the symbols you found and what they mean.Conflict: Interior or exterior? What evidence proves your choice? How does this conflict drive the plot?Suspense: Where is the hint? How is it fulfilled?Foreshadowing: Describe how this shows up in this story.Theme: Define the theme and relate this to something personal in your life.