“The Hellhole” Written by Annie Proulx and “ the Story of an Hour” Written by Kate Chopin

Have you ever experienced something out of the ordinary that brought out your true self? The side of you, you had a feeling was there but never allowed it to show? “The Hellhole” written by Annie Proulx and “ The story of an Hour” written by Kate Chopin both have main characters who go throughout the steps of self-revelation. They each had a very different experience and in the end discovered their true self. In Chopins story, Mrs Mallard “wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister`s arms” after learning of her husband’s death.

This is the experience that is out of the ordinary. Left to her thoughts, Mrs Mallard began to sense an unusual feeling coming about. The feeling was joy. In a time of misogyny, a husbands death meant the widow`s life now belonged to her. At this moment is when the main character made her self-revelations.

The thing she unknowingly longed for was now hers. Unfortunately, she died immediately after her self-revelation when her husband walked through the door. Chopin wrote that she died “of joy that kills”  but readers are led to believe she died from losing her newly found freedom. In Proulx`s story, the reader is given the feeling that Creel, a Game and Fish warden, is tired of writing poachers tickets and really wants them to pay for breaking the law when Creel makes the first poacher, a priest, carry on his back hundreds of pounds of dead animal up a hill. When the poacher starts jumping up and down out of anger, “the gravel heaved and abruptly gasped open” swallowing the priest. Its at this moment Creel begins his road to self-revelation. After he brings a group of poachers to the same spot, he realizes that this is what he unknowingly longed for. This was his self-revelation moment. He wanted these poachers to really pay for what they did.

“He wasted no time in telling his fellow wardens the secret” of his wonderful discovery which “Wardens drove many miles to get outlaws to the wonderful hole”. When Proulx uses the word “wonderful” multiple times to describe a fiery red tube that swallows people, readers can come to the conclusions that Creel , who maybe is Proulx herself, is in favor of justice regardless if the punishment fits the crime or he is in favor of harsher penalties for law breakers. Because there was a lot of activity at this one spot, the Forest Circus, as Creel called them, paved it and added restrooms and parking. Creel explains to his buddy that he tried to “find that sweet, sweet spot” but couldn’t, it was gone. This is when readers get the feeling that Creel was devastated that he couldn’t handle poachers how he truly wanted to. In both stories the main characters showed their true selves. Both characters obtained something they unknowingly longed for then had it ripped away.

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