If You Can Find Yourself, You'll Never Starve

      In Kate Chopin's The Awakening, Edna says "I would give up the unessential; I would give my money, I would give my life for my children, but I wouldn't give myself." Now when I first read what Edna told Adele, I had to reread it. I thought "did she just say that?". In my personal opinion, when a person has kids, the kids become a significant part of that person, or at least they should become a significant part. Of course she should giver at least parts of her self up for her children, I thought. I tried to connect Edna's suicide to modern day society, and that was where I went wrong. I tried to put myself in her shoes and told myself that if I had been Edna, unable to give up myself for my children, then I would never have had children in the first place. But after our class discussed it over a few long class periods, not to drag out this part of my blog more, I realized that you have to step back and really think about Edna's situation from a different point of view.
      Edna never really found her "self" to begin with, and therefore she had no "self" to give, and that is where I believe we (17 and 18 year olds of 2012) find ourselves unable to relate/understand. The problem starts there. Though I don't believe that as Seniors in high school we have all "found ourselves", we have been raised in a society where you're supposed to "find yourself." Though it isn't close to being perfected, gender equality is very encouraged in America. Young men and women go off to college, males and females are managers and CEOs, and boys and girls both compete for Class President in school.
      Last week, I read The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, and the following quote about a girl trying to understand who she really is stuck out to me: "I knelt down in the water, my fingers digging into the roots. Small, bluish tubers that don’t look like much but boiled or baked are as good as any potato. 'Katniss,' I said aloud. It’s the plant I was named for. And I heard my father’s voice joking, 'As long as you can find yourself, you’ll never starve.'" Katniss' father was literally talking about finding the plant to eat and literally not starve, but it also has a deeper meaning. I applied it to The Awakening and the idea of women finding themselves. Now back to what I started to say at the beginning of the previous paragraph, Edna was never given a chance to find herself. She was raised for the sole purpose of becoming a mother and a wife. She never had the opportunity to find anything about herself until it was too late. Edna "starved" without grasping who she really was as an individual and that it why she committed suicide in the end.