Nature and the Human Soul: The Shackles of Freedom Langston Hughes and Kate Chopin use nature in several dimensions to demonstrate the powerful struggles and burdens of human life. Throughout Kate Chopin^s The Awakening and several of Langston Hughes^ poems, the sweeping imagery of the beauty and power of nature demonstrates the struggles the characters confront, and their eventual freedom from those struggles. Nature and freedom coexist, and the characters eventually learn to find freedom from the confines of society, oneself, and finally freedom within one^s soul. The use of nature for this purpose brings the characters and speakers in Chopin^s a