Story Of An Hour And The Interlopers Essay

The Interlopers and The Story of an Hour

The short stories ‘The Interlopers’ and ‘The Story of an Hour’ are both excellent stories, and while they have many differences, they are also very similar. They feature foreshadowing, symbolism and irony, even though the plot and characters are vastly different. Both are extremely interesting and entertaining.

‘The Story of an Hour’ is set on a sunny day where Louise Mallard is told of her husband’s death. We are told that she had ‘heart trouble’ which foreshadowed her death at the end of the book “When the doctors came, they said she had died of heart disease--of the joy that kills.”(Chopin,1). The stormy weather and foreshadowing in ‘The Interlopers’ also tells of a death. In the beginning of the story it tells us, “The roebuck, which usually kept in the sheltered hollows during a storm wind, were running like driven things tonight, and there was movement and unrest among the creatures that were wont to sleep

Ulrich von Gradwitz offered Georg Znaeym a drink of wine after they get pinned down by a tree. Znaeym says that he never drinks with his enemies, but after they reconcile their differences he accepts the flask. The wine flask symbolizes their newfound friendship.

Irony plays a large role in both stories. In ‘The Interlopers’ we see both Georg Znaeym and Ulrich von Gradwitz each wish the other to die, “as men each prayed that misfortune might fall on the other...”. As it would turn out, misfortune falls upon them both, fulfilling each man’s request in a twisted and ironic way that neither anticipated. ‘The Story of an Hour’ shows irony in another way. At the beginning, we are told that Louise Mallard’s husband has died and her friends fear that she might die from the shock of the news. However, at the end she does die of shock when she finds out that her husband has not died.

Though very different in plot, these two stories are very similar in many ways. They were