When you give up in english class:
The following is a giving up essay:
When one thinks about sandwiches and human beings, one can draw any number of parallels, but it takes a special author to bring the parallels one commonly thinks of to life. In Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, Edna is like a tightly packed Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich being squished throughout the course of the day, in the sense that both are: unwanted and considered by most to be unappetizing, don’t look or act as they’re intended to when compared to societal norms, and in the end cannot be considered fit for the roles that were assigned to them.
When a sandwich is packed tightly it undergoes a certain amount of pressure; whether it’s from books being accidentally stacked on top of it inside a backpack, the odd run in with that pointy mechanical pencil, or the forever inevitable emotional damage it can suffer when it's peanut butter leaks out into the public view in a display of shame seemingly witnessed by everyone with eyes... Okay. So maybe the last one doesn’t apply to sandwiches as much, but it certainly applies to Edna. Both undergo pressure from outside forces. For the sandwich it’s a physical force, and for Edna it’s the force of society’s expectations. When Edna is pushed into a role she doesn’t want to be in, she acts out and is viewed as a poor or incapable mother. This serves to slowly ostracize her. Just as the owner of the sandwich would be dissatisfied with its diminished quality, Edna’s “owner” (or the individual/group she has to please) would be dissatisfied with the level of effort she puts into being a devoted wife and mother.
When a squished sandwich is viewed in its sorrow state, it’s often disregarded as a sandwich. It used to be a proper sandwich, but now its bread is mangled and smeared with P.B. and J in all the wrong places. Now that it’s changed, one can never revert it back to the way it was when it was new. At one point, Edna must have seemed pleasing to Leonce, after all, they did marry. But as their relationship progressed it became evident to the both of them that Edna cared more about her own personal interests, such as art and music. Edna started as a proper wife, but felt too pressured by her given roles that she sought relief, and once she gained it, she could never be the same. A mangled sandwich may still look like a sandwich, but it’s not looked upon as favorably as a sandwich that hasn’t been touched. In this case, Edna was touched by her self exploration and discovery.
After so much change, there comes a point where a sandwich can no longer be considered as such. Its packaging may have been punctured, it’s insides may be spilled all over, it’s bread may even be beginning to mold, and it gets worse every second. Once the sandwich is corrupted, it gets worse every moment it remains in the environment it’s corrupted in until the sandwich is not longer edible. When Edna starts down her road of self exploration, she resides in an environment that is considered by society to be corruptive. After she falls in love with Robert, moves out of her husband’s house, then proceeds to have an affair with Alcee, she’s no longer considered a mother/wife by society, and she knows this. When she’s no longer considered a mother/wife, she finds her way back to where her freedom started and takes her own life.
Unfortunately both sandwiches and human beings lost a lot in this essay, but on a brighter note at least we have some more insight as to how Edna in Kate Chopin’s The Awakening is similar to a tightly packed peanut butter and jelly sandwich being squished throughout the course of the day. Both are heavily subjected to pressure, physical and societal, and suffer from those pressures. They’re unwanted, misfitting, and at the end of the day they cannot fill the roles that were assigned to them in their beginnings.
