Creative Remix "The Story of Half an Hour"

Brently Mallard was a simple construction worker. Day in and day out he worked the construction yard eight hours a day, five days a week. Every day when he returned from work he might have been greeted by his wife. She may have been preparing dinner one day but the next sitting on the couch watching television. For what work did she do? he thought. Operating simple machines was her daily routine - microwave, oven, dishwasher, laundry machine & dryer, vacuum cleaner - tasks that would take him mere minutes to complete. What was the reason she was here again? Love. Love…Love…Love. The word kept repeating in his mind until it lost almost all meaning entirely. Numbing his mind to the truth of the matter. The affection and mutual enjoyment was gone almost entirely. Bearing no kids they lived a simpler life than most. With their lust and sex life whittling away, it was even simpler than that.

On his way back home, he turned on the radio. In recent news a train accident had occurred in town. Somehow, his name was the first to be listed as a confirmed death. His mind cracked. An inspiration instantly sprouted in his mind that distracted him from steering his car for a moment. Divorce: such a messy process. Arguing, tears, and least of all, mutual agreement for the decision to happen. Too much wasted time for what? A cessation of a simple contract of the state. A date watching a cloudy sky sounded more useful to him, more fun even. Instead of a month of asset battles, he could simply enjoy the rainbow made from a drizzling day.

For was it love that changed him? Perhaps. But that is not what he looked back on now. Family gossip, friend shaming, gossip, television whispers had somehow changed who he was without even realizing it. She played no part when looking upon the past. Slowly, he got a grin on his face. After years being in this marriage, it was not love that he realized carried him through the day to day. It was always the societal standards built around him meant to keep him trapped, docile, and obedient. This is not how he acted 20 years ago - this is never how he wanted to be.

He could finally have a chance to make his own path, not defined by another individual’s presence ~ even with something as benign as where to eat.

Then, with his usual route being exit 23; today he decided to take exit 24 instead.

Critical Preface: “The Story of Half an Hour”

This story puts a modern twist on ‘The Story of an Hour’. Marriage in this day and age is much less of a forced decision upon both parties. However, even in the current age where marriage is voluntary to the majority of individuals there still is a higher divorce rate in the previous centuries. This story connects to that of a stale or slightly disgruntled marriage. When it is “cheaper to keep her” where the emotional, physical, and economic distraught is not worth the effort for separation. This story is meant to focus on the male side of that relationship. The two important changes were that of a gender swap and modern century force forward to bring “The Story of an Hour” to the present day. Traditionalism 200 years ago played a heavy role in not only gender norms, but also in functional aspects in terms of a societal contract. Overtime, into the modern age, this concept of traditional male/female “roles” have little place. Men and women have equal autonomy over their own destiny. The concept of a bread-winning husband and stay at home wife has little bearing other than it was brought down through tradition. This system no longer can or will work. This is what the story is trying to bring to light and adapts from Kate Chopin’s work that marriage still limits the individual freedoms of both parties. The freedom to leave. It is quite difficult to do so after an attachment has been made.

As for the theme itself, the main overarching point of writing a story on Mr. Mallard’s perspective was to try to convey the aspect of being against marriage traditionalism. It’s limited the wife to being, well, a housewife and the husband being a breadwinner. With equal rights being more prevalent than ever, content grows between the two parties when power is split unevenly among them. The husband has little ability to enjoy his house because he is staying at his nine to five job. The housewife could go out and explore other opportunities but it’s much easier to offload the responsibility when a husband is supporting the wife. At-least in this instance the balance of responsibilities become tipped to unbalance the welfare of the relationship.

This story is much more direct and obtuse in its telling in terms of form. It’s much more focused on his situation rather than describing what he was doing unlike Chopin’s work which takes a more artistic approach. For example, “There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it? She did not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name”. Chopin takes three sentences to describe a feeling without ever directly saying its underlying concept. In contrast this story outright states these underlying feelings or more directly addresses them: “It was always the societal standards built around him meant to keep him trapped, docile, and obedient.” The sentence cuts through the abstractness and artistic means to convey what someone has going on inside their mind. This approach was taken to simplify the notion Chopin was trying to convey by using emphasis through briefness.

In terms of content this story takes creative alterations on where the story ends. The main change was following Mr. Mallard instead of Mrs. Mallard. While in the initial story Mrs. Mallard was a disgruntled wife, in this story the script is flipped for Mr. Mallard to be a disgruntled husband. Rather than Mrs. Mallard dying to leave her discontent, it is Mr. Mallard physically leaving to end what he wanted to end long ago. There was an effort to parody Chopin’s work by leaving the story off with a cessation of their relationship. Trying to mirror the sense of “release” when you have the ability to leave. In Chopin’s work she has the character leave by dying “When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease-…”. In this work the character is leaving physically instead by taking a different route on the highway: “Then, with his usual route being exit 23; today he decided to take exit 24 instead.” The other way this story is altered in terms of contents is through a slightly different telling. This story goes out and lists individual gripes that Mr. Mallard has against Mrs. Mallard. It is trying to rhetorically tell all the straws that end up breaking the camel’s back. This is slightly similar to the way Mrs. Mallard realized that all the “straws” in her life were holding her back as well.

This transitions well into what the creative remix is trying to convey. An unhappy partnership affects both individuals but the way it thoughts manifest changes depending upon the person. This is usually in the form of he said she said of what each person thinks the other is not doing. This story tries to keep the theme of an anti-marriage stance, not based upon the restrictions of the best, but based upon how it has developed into modern times. It keeps that theme by showing how even with most of the improvements to life such as agriculture, machines, and industrial changes that the basics underlying interpersonal relationships do not change. By keeping the end the same, the hope is to not dramatically change the original theme of Chopin’s work only to show a different perspective with a twist - hence a creative remix.

The short story engages with the text by keeping small elements of the story and coalescing with the overall theme by reflecting the text in an altered mirror. This includes items such as the train accident in Chopin’s work, “It was he who had been in the newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with Brently Mallard’s name leading the list of killed,” being adopted into this text: “Somehow, Mr. Mallards name was the first to be listed as a confirmed death.” Instead of the train accident being Mrs. Mallard’s good news it turns into and becomes Mr. Mallard’s good news. In Chopin’s story she is much more explicit on the realization of how the train accident was good news. Once she finally realized that she could do anything she wanted she blurred out loud, “Free! Body and soul free!” she kept whispering.” In the retelling, this realization is, as hoped, more methodically planned out in this realization while still showing how the train news affected Mr. Mallard with “his mind cracked” being the initial thought beginning to sprout. The final action from that thought being him leaving.

Creatively interpreting the text gives the ability for the remixer to deeply understand and identify the specific message a particular author was trying to convey when writing the story. By putting in the effort into trying to reconvey that same meaning, you truly have to understand not only the general idea of the story but what ticks within the story caused the cohesion. Without that understanding someone is going to make a story with a different message and end goal and, at that point, the purpose of the remix is lost. Within “The Story of an Hour,” Chopin shows throughout the story how the wife has felt trapped within the marriage. Culturally, the belief of marriage is seen as one of eternal ties and a happy bond between two individuals. Chopin reflects upon that ideal and breaks it to pieces. The “Story of Half an Hour” maintains that same position Chopin took and reflects upon it in almost the same way, marriage as a trap instead of a bond. The world is not perfect and even though there may be a cultural ideal behind marriage, it does not align with the harsh messiness of reality and the dynamic personalities that people are.

Literature, in the form of a remix or not, has the ability to reflect onto different social and civil lives within society. Within every society there are many subcultures in which the general culture is formed as everyone intermingles and intertwines. Literature in a sense, is much more indirect with its critiques or praises when it comes to general norms that everyone lives by. A good parallel is how Generation Z currently uses memes for criticizing the American political climate without having to write pages of detailed analysis on the faults within the system. In general, literature takes more creative liberty by presenting a situation in piecemeal fashion to slowly form the overarching idea. Unlike, per say, an argumentative essay which usually outright states its thesis at the beginning of the text. In Chopin’s original work and the creative remix, there is a direct~indirect commentary on marriage as a principal (Chopin) and marriage as an institution (Remix). This story was selected to expand on how marriage has evolved into the current century after the sexual revolution and many other striking changes. With Chopin, she shows how marriage socially limits women of the age inside of their house. Within the remix, there is an attempt to show that marriage has limited men due to marriage being integrated into the legal system. The story was selected over other short stories we have read due to the fact that it is somewhat time period specific and can be correlated to present time, unlike other stories such as “The Cask of Amontillado” which while set in a specific time period could as easily be told in a different time period with the same theme of revenge being pronounced.

This remix did not try to explain the entire situation and enumeration of marriage as a religious, cultural, societal, and institutional structure. The sharp focus was how a person can self-rationalize or start to reflect upon their current relationship in relation to that marriage. This challenges the traditional notion that marriage is “till death do us part”, because most of the time that’s not the case. That is why creatively interpreting the text adds an additional level of understanding. You can still show the same message even though you are changing perspective in many different ways.