The Awakening – the Sea Essay

The sea in The Awakening represents not only Edna’s self-awakening, evolution and progress, but as well the mix of freedom and death. In her look for freedom, the sea plays a part in the realization which the only approach to achieve flexibility is through death: her true arising. We get as far as to talk about that throughout the novel, Edna is aware of this kind of dark fact, but only on a unconscious level, which explains why she simply sees the ocean as place of self-expression and freedom, but nothing deeper before the very end.

She is by itself in this recognition, which actually isn’t described until her one-on-one encounter with the sea and the abysses of isolation, even though the girl with quite the loner throughout the novel. These types of meetings while using sea display a advancement in Edna’s life, coming from afraid and dependent, to confused and in transition, to confident and fully woke up to her unavoidable fate, the facts, the answer and only way out. This marks a loss of chasteness and naïveté of types, her turning from an attractive selfish and capricious kid to a sort of responsible, strong and lighted adult. Edna’s awakening and full changeover from childlike to knowing was 1 full of difficulty and hurdles to surmount.

The sea is simply symbol of that evolution: both main activities with it are completely representative of Edna Pontellier’s separated shift from dissatisfied and confused to entirely free of any kind of restriction. It can help her arrive to realize that she shouldn’t expect or hope for anything at all from the culture she occupied, no matter what the lady attempted to gain freeness from, including like affairs with anyone, whether it be Alcée or perhaps Robert. The sea is the one and only thing leading her real awakening, mainly because it’s the sole possible method to slowly gain total independence, and, in the end, freedom through her death.