The passage exemplifies rising action primarily because the chapter shows Edna's conflicting feelings about life and herself. The internal struggle that Edna experiences regarding her desires and impulses, particularly in relation to the sea and her connection with Robert, indicates her growing self-awareness and the turmoil she faces as she navigates her identity. This tension marks a crucial part of the rising action as it sets the stage for her eventual transformation and the challenges she will confront in the narrative.
Edna Pontellier could not have told why, wishing to go to the beach with Robert, she should in the first place have declined, and in the second place have followed in obedience to one of the two contradictory impulses which impelled her….
But the beginning of things, of a world especially, is necessarily vague, tangled, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing. How few of us ever emerge from such beginning! How many souls perish in its tumult!
The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander for a spell in abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation.
The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace.
What makes this passage an example of rising action?
The chapter compares Edna to the sea by showing that she is a sensuous person.
The chapter solidifies the reader’s sense of the setting of the story.
The chapter shows Edna’s conflicting feelings about life and herself.
The chapter shows how Edna’s fear of the sea creates conflicts.
1 answer