Beginning of Essay
Throughout , Kate Chopin conveys her ideas by using carefully crafted symbols that reflect her characters' thoughts and futures. One of the most important of these symbols, the bird, appears constantly, interwoven in the story to provide an insight to the conditio ....

Middle of Essay
.... keeps her from being free. At the same time, she remains shut apart from society like the bird in the cage, and different ideas and feelings prevent her from communicating. The only person in society that begins to understand her, Robert, eventually decides that he must remain a member of society instead of staying with her. He says that "you [Edna] were not free; you were Leonce Pontellier's wife" and that "[Robert] was demented, dreaming of wild, impossible things...[such as] men who had set their wives free" (108). Robert does not want to do something wild and unacceptable to society. In a situation parallel to that of Edna's, the only bird that ....