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Name:____________________________________ Teacher: BLISSIT
Period:
OER PRACTICE
“The Story of an Hour” (784-787) and “Joyas Voladoras” (790-792)
What realization does Mrs. Mallard experience after she learns of her husband’s death?
Mrs. Mallard realizes after her husband’s death that her life would change
dramatically because she’d be able to make more of her own decisions. She
realized that she “[possessed] self-assertion [and] recognized [it] as the strongest
impulse of her being.” Mrs. Mallard suddenly realized that she would have the
freedom to finally assert herself, which is a fundamental part of her very existence.
In the second to last paragraph of “Joyas Voladoras,” what purpose does the author
achieve by describing the hearts of numerous kinds of animals?
The author establishes a connection between all living things. He describes
animals with many chambered hearts, to creatures that have “hearts with one
chamber,” to unicellular bacteria [that has] fluid eternally in motion, swirling
and whirling.” Through the author’s description of each living thing he shows
that we all have a common life source that “churns inside” to provide existence.
How do the authors of both “The Story of an Hour” and “Joyas Voladoras” use the heart
as a metaphor?
The heart is used as a metaphor or the spirit in both “The Story of an Hour” and “Joyas
Voladoras.” In “The Story of an Hour” Mrs. Mallard felt liberated by her husband’s death,
stating, “Free! Free! Free!” but when she sees him open the front door, she “[dies] of heart
disease.” At this moment, Mrs. Mallard’s spirit is crushed and is reflected in the way her heart
stops beating. In “Joyas Voladoras” the author says, “so much is held in the heart in a lifetime”
and describes hearts that are “scarred and bruised,” “patched by force of character,” and
“repaired by time and will.” All of these descriptions are metaphoric, not literal, and relate to the
spirit of a living being. Clearly the heart is a metaphor for the spirit.