Christopher Ramos April 4, 2010 Period 2 The Awakening Essay Test Is life predetermined even before we are born

and are just following a drawn path or are we responsible for our own lives and choices is the moral dilemma Edna faces her entire life. Naturalism is the belief that there is a lack of choice and that destiny decides our life with the individual having no say whatever which I disagree with. Although there social status and which situation you are is environmental what really affects your life is your choices. Simply blaming life for its challenges meant that Edna did not have to admit to herself that she could have changed her life if she choose to disobey society and follow her hearts desire. However fear of not conforming and being labeled as an outcast prevented her from being truly from any social restraints. Mostly human nature is to blame for Edna's situation although some of the blame does falls on her shoulders for conforming her entire life until it was too late. . In human nature there is always a conflict of desire. The need to fit is a driving force while also the desire to be an individual and to be unique is exactly what Edna is so conflicted about. An indescribable oppression which seemed to generate in some unfamiliarity of her consciousness filled her being with a vague anguish Pg 8 (Kate Chopin). Being forced to become a mother and having kids that she did not want since it presses into her soul creating an anguish in which she realizes how unhappy she is with her life. Seeing that she could no longer escape the clutches of a system that did not allow women to be an independent and fall into a role Edna did the only thing that she could see in her grim life which was committing suicide. This show that she did not have the courage to risk going against the very same society she had blended in her entire life. goodbye, because I love you pg 156 (Kate Chopin) Not being able to tell Robert that it was he who held the vital part in her heart she looked for an escape and found it in ending her life freeing her from a life fulled of anguish. However if Edna had chosen to escape with Robert and leave the island behind therefore breaking every restraints placed on her the freedom that seemed so elusive would be in her grasp. In the end naturalism does exists but it does decide our fate before we even get a choice. Edna blames her life on the inability to choose her own life while in the meanwhile her life could have been changed by not conforming to what is expected of her. The desire to conform drove Edna to have a life where

she was so unhappy that the only plausible way out for her was to commit suicide which she choose and was not decided by naturalism since it was entirely of her own accord. Therefore if naturalism did influence our lives to a drastic degree there would have never been any revolutions, or freedoms for that matter.