Langston Hughes and Kate Chopin use nature in multiple dimensions to demonstrate the powerful struggles and burdens of human life. Throughout Kate Chopin's The Awakening and several of Langston Hughes' poems, the striking images of the beauty and power of nature demonstrate the struggles the characters face and their eventual liberation from those struggles. Nature and freedom coexist, and the characters eventually learn to break free from the confines of society, from themselves, and finally find freedom in their souls. The use of nature for this purpose brings the characters and speakers in the works of Chopin and Hughes to life, and the reader feels the life and freedom of these characters. Nature, in the works of Chopin and Hughes, constitutes a powerful symbol which represents the struggle of the human soul towards freedom, the anguish of this struggle and the joy when this freedom is finally achieved. In The Awakening, the protagonist Edna Pontellier undergoes a metamorphosis. She lives in Creole society, a society that restricts sexuality, especially for women of the time. Edna is bound by the confines of a loveless marriage, unfulfilled, unhappy and confined like a bird in a cage. During her summer on Grand Isle, she is confronted with her true nature and finds herself swept away by passion and love for someone she cannot have, Robert Lebrun. The imagery of the ocean at Grand Isle and its attributes symbolize a force calling to it. to face his inner struggles and find freedom. Chopin uses the imagery of the ocean to represent the innate strength of his soul calling to him. "The voice of the sea is seductive; it never ceases to whisper, to cry, to murmur, inviting the soul to wander for a moment in the abysses of solitude; to lose itself in a labyrinth of inner contemplation." (p.14) Thanks to nature and its power, Edna begins to find freedom in her soul and then returns to a life in the city where the conflicts surrounding her reside. Edna grew up on a plantation in Mississippi, where life was simple, happy and peaceful. The images of nature, which serve as a symbol of the freedom of the soul, appear when she speaks of this existence. In the novel, she remembers a simpler life as a child, engulfed in nature and free: "The warm wind that hit my face made me think - without any connection that I can trace - of a summer day in Kentucky, at a meadow that seemed as big as the ocean to the tiny girl walking in the grass, which was taller than her waist.