This essay examines the theme of freedom and self-determination across three literary works: Kate Chopin's short story "The Story of an Hour," Robert Frost's poem "The Road Not Taken," and Raymond Carver's short story "Cathedral." Through close reading and comparison, the paper identifies three distinct configurations of the conflict between constraint and freedom. Chopin presents freedom as an externally imposed liberation from social bondage; Frost frames it as an internal, moment-by-moment act of choosing one's own path; and Carver depicts freedom as a guided transformation away from prejudice. Together, the three works reveal how literature can approach the same philosophical question from meaningfully different angles.
The paper demonstrates sustained thematic comparison across genres (short story, poem, short story). Rather than treating each work in isolation, the writer builds a running contrast: Chopin's externally imposed freedom is set against Frost's internally chosen paths, and Carver's guided transformation synthesizes elements of both. This tri-part comparative structure is a useful model for any essay that must draw meaningful distinctions among multiple primary texts.
The essay opens with a framing introduction that defines the central question and previews each work's answer. Three body sections follow in order, each analyzing one text while explicitly connecting back to the others. The conclusion is brief and synthesizing, restating the three perspectives without introducing new material. The bibliography lists all three primary sources in a consistent format.
What is freedom, and how does it arrive? This challenging question has been answered in various ways through literature as well as philosophy. It remains a stable concern for every new generation of thinkers and for each new situation tackled in literary works. Narratives and poems have suggested alternative arrangements of this theme and have drawn attention to different conflicts involved in its resolution. Kate Chopin's "The Story of an Hour" views freedom as liberation for self-assertion against social bondage — a liberation that comes through chance external circumstances. Robert Frost's poem "The Road Not Taken" positions freedom as an internal choice one makes at every moment, based on fateful encounters as they arise. Raymond Carver's "Cathedral" takes the view that freedom emerges through a guided working-through of one's prejudices. Each of these works has something important to say in the way it configures its narrative or verse around the topic of free choice. Through a comparison of these works, this essay analyzes how these thematic variations on the conflict between freedom and determination have been posed and resolved differently.
Chopin (2003) begins "The Story of an Hour" by pointing out two crucial pieces of information about the main character, Mrs. Mallard: her "heart trouble" and her husband's recent death, of which she has yet to receive news (p. 171). The tension is clear. A report about a fatal accident involving a spouse, no matter how tenderly it is conveyed, could easily stir an excessive and dangerous rhythm in the heartbeat. From the first lines, the story forces the reader to wonder what the woman's response will be given her unstable condition.
Her response to hearing of Mr. Mallard's death in a railroad disaster is unexpected because it is not normative. The narrator says, "She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance" (p. 171). Instead, the news elicits a brief, wild burst of grieving without pause (p. 171). Her tears come immediately, with no period of adjustment to the unexpected. This is important for the narrative since it moves the action along rapidly — there is no delay between the news, the expressed grief, and the solitary retreat to an upstairs room for reflection. It is, however, a strange enough response to make the reader consider what the relationship between husband and wife must be for her to react so quickly. It is almost as though she had been waiting for such news.
In the room where she has secluded herself, Mrs. Mallard undergoes a change. The isolation and quiet give her space to absorb, almost unconsciously, the consequences of her husband's sudden disappearance from her life. Natural and urban sensations sink into her as she sits motionless in her chair, gazing out the window (p. 171). The text characterizes her as repressed (p. 172), which harks back to her marriage. Perhaps the social pressures of marriage had weighed too heavily on her. Perhaps her husband has contributed to why her heart is weak, although her eyes themselves convey strength. Later the text reveals that she loved him only sometimes, though she would cry at his funeral (p. 172). At the same time she is empty, feeling that something "subtle and elusive" is about to reveal itself to her (p. 172). In this waiting, she experiences fear. What could be fearful? In openness, one might expect to feel joy — not fear — unless one is unaccustomed to the experience of freedom. Now that the restraint of marriage has vanished, what she faces is something terrifying. Mrs. Mallard battles willfully this "thing that was approaching to possess her." The reader is caught in the grip of the story's central conflict.
The answer is freedom. She whispers: "free, free, free!" (p. 172). With this the reader's suspicions about the stress of marriage are confirmed. Marriage had imprisoned her in a social role that lacked freedom. Her husband's death is a terrifying release — she must now figure out how to exist without the routines and expectations that had structured her life. She faces an open void of possibility. Quickly her feeling shifts away from fear: "The vacant stare and the look of terror that had followed it went from her eyes" (p. 172). Mrs. Mallard falls into warm relaxation as she realizes and welcomes what has opened before her. "But she saw beyond that bitter moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely" (p. 172). This contrasts sharply with the closure of her past experience. In her marriage she had lived for others, sacrificing herself to the will and desire of others. Now, this death has freed her to "live for herself" (p. 172). She thinks, "What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!" (p. 172). She begins excitedly looking ahead at a long life of freedom. "There was a feverish triumph in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory" (p. 173).
Yet how short-lived her new attitude proves to be. The report had been hasty and false. Mr. Mallard appears at the door. In shock — which the doctors misinterpret as "joy that kills" — she collapses. This reversal undoes the resolution of conflict that Mrs. Mallard had won in her quiet room. Ironically, it is his appearance, the news of his survival rather than of his death, that contributes to her fatal cardiac arrest.
In terms of the theme of self-determination, Chopin's story shows that Mrs. Mallard's liberation is made for her rather than by her. She did not cause the accident that allegedly killed her husband, nor had she asserted her free will prior to the event through something such as divorce. Her self-assertion comes afterwards, set up by external happenings entirely beyond her control. External forces mediate her transformation into freedom. This is one way the conflict between freedom and determinism can be organized in a narrative.
Robert Frost's poem "The Road Not Taken" (1969) takes a different approach to the theme of self-determination and its conflict with bondage. The dilemma is set up differently — phrased in terms of a choice between two possible paths:
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth (lines 1–5)
A dualism presents itself immediately. There are only two roads at the fork. In Chopin's "The Story of an Hour," one saw two contrasting states: marriage and constraint on one side, singleness and self-assertion on the other. Here in Frost's poem there are also two paths, but are they opposed in the same way? Is one linked with social determinism while the other is linked with personal freedom? The argument here is that this is a different way of stating the problem. Both roads in the poem imply freedom to travel down them; neither implies constraint. The poem points to the inherent capacity of an individual to choose freely which road to walk. The traveler facing a fork has control over how he or she will respond. As in Chopin's story, the possibility of choice is determined externally — the traveler did not create the fork in the road — but in contrast with Chopin, Frost suggests that either path may be equally valuable and may equally contribute to one's self-assertive freedom.
The second stanza reveals the nature of the paths. Both are "fair" (line 6), and one has "perhaps the better claim" (7) because "it was grassy and wanted wear" (8). Yet the poet also indicates that the two roads are worn "about the same" (10) and that neither had been stepped on that morning (10–12). This is significant: the speaker does not adopt a judgmental attitude toward one way over the other. Although he must choose, he can acknowledge that both ways are attractive. Neither possesses a special quality that makes it irresistible or inherently forbidden. In Chopin, married life prevented the woman from pursuing self-determination; in Frost, the person retains self-determination regardless of which path is chosen.
On what, then, does the traveler base his or her choice, if both ways are equally fair? The poem gives little explicit answer. Line 13 simply states, "Oh, I kept the first for another day!" The same sentiment could have been expressed about the second path had the first been chosen instead. The point is that a choice is determinative for what follows and second chances are rare, yet the choice itself is taken freely — without foreknowledge, almost blindly. After making the selection, the traveler says, "Yet knowing how way leads on to way / I doubted if I should ever come back" (14–15). As one continues to encounter different forks along the way, the endless paths leave little chance of ever returning to the road not taken. One can see a parallel with Mrs. Mallard's change: as she looks out into the future, she too sees endless possibilities and nothing feels like a return to the determined state of marriage.
The final lines of the poem declare, "I took the one less traveled by / and that has made all the difference" (19–20). Unlike in Chopin, the traveler actively determines to take a path. In Chopin, the path forces itself upon the protagonist; the accident and the feeling of freedom are thrust upon her outside of her control. In Frost, while the individual does not create the external conditions of the choice, freedom stems from an inner impulse. The traveler finds the two paths, which open up by chance, yet the traveler initiates the encounter without waiting for something to arrive. Furthermore, the choice of which path to take is an explicit process of decision — the traveler stops, compares, and ponders before deciding one course over the other. In Chopin there is none of this; there is only response, not initiative. Yet in Frost there is no sense of conflict between repression and freedom, nor does the poem convey the joy at transformation that Chopin's protagonist conveys. This is because for Frost, freedom exists at every moment, whereas in Chopin, freedom is an unexpected and shocking arrival.
Raymond Carver (1981) addresses self-determination in yet a third way in his short story "Cathedral." Freedom in this story is neither complete freedom to choose a path, as in Frost, nor complete external control over whether freedom arrives by chance, as in Chopin. It is freedom resisted but ultimately gained through guidance. The married male narrator becomes deeply involved in an encounter that transforms him — a change toward openness akin to Mrs. Mallard's transformation in "The Story of an Hour," and bearing similarities to Frost's poem as well, but set within the context of prejudice.
The couple expects a blind visitor named Robert, a friend of the narrator's wife. The wife had experienced a transformative event — Robert's touching of her face — that had been important to her (p. 210). She is neither biased nor ignorant in the way her husband is. The husband, who admits he has never known or met a blind man (p. 215), is uncomfortable with the idea of a blind man in his home (p. 209). His biased resistance is evident throughout: he fails to understand his wife's friendship with Robert (p. 210); he feels pity for Robert's former wife, unable to comprehend how she could have lived with a man who could not see her (p. 213); and he holds false presumptions about blind men — for instance, that they do not wear beards (p. 214) or smoke (p. 217).
Frost, Robert. (1969). The Poetry of Robert Frost: The Collected Poems. E. C. Lathem, Ed. New York: Holt.
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