The Opening to the Awakening

The first three chapters to Kate Chopin’s The Awakening offer an easy-to-see and instructive example into showing without telling. The point of these opening chapters is to get across to the reader the idea of turmoil beneath the apparently idyllic, and Chopin cleverly begins with the veneer. Chapter One, then, provides us with a scene that is almost dreamlike, and this feeling is punctuated by its final paragraphs, when Mr. Pontellier leaves home in his ultimate carefree manner. Next, Chapter Two is a necessary information dump, required to orientate the reader toward the lines that are supposed to be read between. Finally, Chapter Three shows us the nightmare, and this feeling is punctuated by the casualness involved in Mrs. Pontellier’s crying alone on the porch. On one end, dream, and on the other end, nightmare, with the necessary wedged between, and all done by showing without telling.