Theme Analysis

 Dakota Michelini

Theme Analysis

Guilt

Guilt as one of man's strongest emotions can consume a person and drive them to craziness or a dark feeling they deal with for the rest of their lives. Guilt can plague your thoughts and mind in every moment of silence and leads many to live a life of constant stimulation to block out the noise of guilt. 

Mrs Daas from an interpreter of Maladies hold the guilt of her affairs against her husband Raas and the sick feeling that she might have had a happier life if she had never been with him. For Mrs Daas we never see her express guilt in conversation with her husband although she does explain to Mr Kapasi how she felt she never got to live being with her husband practically her whole life. Mr Kapasi Asks “He decided to begin with the most obvious question, to get to the heart of the matter, and so he asked, “Is it really pain you feel, Mrs. Das, or is it guilt?”. At the climax of the story Mrs Daas’s bastard child is attacked by monkeys and she shows guilt that she had not been there to protect him.

The Storm is the story of an affair between two past lovers, Alcee and Calixta, and in relation to Guilt has an opposite relationship. After the affair Calixta appears to show satisfaction and happy that she was able to commit adultery rather than guilty for what she had done to her husband and family. Chopin to show the extent of her satisfaction writes “They laughed much and so loud that anyone might have heard them as far away as Laballiere’s” (Chopin 108).