Many controversies surround the end of Kate Chopin's The Awakening and for good reason; the novel can be used to support two completely opposing points of view. On the one hand, Edna Pontellier's suicide can be seen as the culmination of Edna's awakening as she comes to see herself and her place in reality and begins to fully control and ultimately her own destiny rather than giving up what she has earned. Conversely, Edna's ending can be seen as a most terrible failure which mocks not only her own awakening, but also the message that Kate Chopin intends to tell. Several passages and ideas from the novel can be used to support either point of view and, in some cases, depending on interpretation, both. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay It's easy for readers to view Edna's suicide as a failure, because frankly, it's unpleasant. People instinctively avoid death, and the strength and growth Edna demonstrates throughout the novel makes her death even worse while also making her feel bad. The final chapter, in which Edna drowns, contains much evidence to support the negative view of Edna's death. Very early on, she reveals the heart of her failure; she has shed the entire world she had lived in, but is unable to define a world she can enter. First, she talks about abandoning the men in her life. "'Today it's Arobin, tomorrow it will be someone else. It makes no difference to me, regardless of Léonce Pontellier...", she said, realizing: "There was no no human being she wanted near her.” except Robert; and she realized that the day would come when he too, and the thought of him would disappear from her existence, leaving her alone. (pp. 188-189) She then explains her children as "antagonists" who sought to enslave her soul, "But," she confides, "she knew how to escape them." (p. 189) She finally escapes the mental slavery of men and her children that society had tried to impose on her, but she was not ready to suddenly abandon everything in her world, because she had nowhere where to go and became depressed because “there was nothing in the world she wanted.” » (p. 198) Edna's failure can be seen as a battle forward without looking at where she was headed and thus ending up in limbo. There are several instances in the final chapter where Edna herself supports her view of herself as a failure. As she walks on the beach, she pretends that there are no living things, but in the next sentence she describes a bird with a broken wing falling into the sea. In the novel, birds are often symbols for women and for Edna in particular. Looking at the bird with a broken wing like Edna, we see that although the bird flies freely, it is too injured to continue and therefore dies in the sea. The fact that Edna claims that no living being can be seen may imply that she already considers herself symbolically "dead" due to her failure and that her swimming only completes the process, just like the bird's dive into the sea. The image of the sea as seductive gives even more credit to this idea because it offers a definitive escape from the struggle and discouragement that she cannot overcome. The sea is also described as "coiled like serpents", which are a classic symbol of seductive evil. (p. 189) Perhaps Edna's clearest admission of failure is her thought of Miss Reisz mocking her act of suicide, "And you call yourself an artist!" What pretensions, Madam! The artist must possess the soul.