"The Necklace," Guy de Maupassant effectively employs a very dreary mood, despondent character and a surprise ending to develop the idea that when an individual is overcome by greed, that person has an excessive desire to obtain material wealth to feel self sustained. “The Necklace” by Guy de Maupassant is about a girl who lives a poor and unfortunate life. She dreams of living in a high class society with many riches and jewels. She sees herself as something important and a person that everyone should respect as a valuable person. The only way Mathilde Loisel can be satisfied with herself and be content is by having expensive objects in her possession. Unfortunately for her she does not have the opportunity or the availability to buy luxurious items for self and becomes frustrated. Without the things that she desires she can not feel happy about how she is living and can not appreciate what she has. Her strong need for the expensive things makes her sad and sorrowful because she lives a normal life with her husband. Attending to typical housewife duties like cooking and cleaning, when she rather be wearing lavish clothes and fancy jewelry. With all the basic needs are are necessary to life a comfortable life. What she desire and hopes for is impractical. Knowing that she can never obtain the wealthy life she begins to feel sorrowful and sadden by that. Her greed for expensive items has become apart of her daily life and it is something that she can't easily change. With her vital need for these items it is a critical aspect in her because without those things she desires she can never be happy and satisfied with her life. Mathilde Loisel will never experience what is like to not have to depend on a physical object to... ... middle of paper ... ...tion we will receive our desired result. People only do actions to satisfy there crave and to get a certain outcome out of it that comes after doing that action. Some people's outcomes result in a selfish and cruel act, but the only reason that person is taking that act is because they crave for the outcome of doing that action. On the other hand some actions of greed can lead to good results, like if a person's car's battery died on the side of the road. Another person will feel the desire to help the unfortunate person to make themselves feel like they did a good deed and leave them with a good feeling and that person is doing a act of greed. So greed can be good and bad, but with Mathilde Loisel her desire was extremely excessive and it portrayed an important point that if you can find happiness by yourself you will need other things or people to make you happy.
In The Hound of the Baskerville, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle displays the effects of the greed by causing Hugo to be selfish, letting Mr. Stapleton have everything that he wants, and causing Mr. Stapleton to be jealous of Sir Henry. Finally, greed has to do with wanting lots of money or material wealth, but it doesn’t necessarily only relates to money. Greed can be for anything but is most likely for food, money, possessive, power, fame, or status. Never be greedy because it can mess up your whole life like Mr. Stapleton and
Greed is defined as the intense and selfish desire for food wealth, or power. In Frank Norris’ novel of McTeague the nature of greed is evident throughout the work. Many of the characters such as McTeague, Trina, and Zerkow show numerous situations where greed takes over their lives. These situations where we see greed occurs with money, love and... This essay will be discussing the nature of greed that takes place throughout the novel and supported evidence to support this greed that occurs throughout the work.
In “The Necklace” by Guy de Maupassant the character Madame Loisel was always longing for expensive possessions, larger
“Greed is a bottomless pit which exhausts the person in an endless effort to satisfy the need without reaching satisfaction.” Erich Fromm expresses how greed can take over a person’s life. In Dr. Seuss's The Lorax, The Once-ler travels to a land with the most beautiful trees he has ever laid eyes on. He is mesmerized by the vibrant sounds and colors that engulf him as he enters this paradise. The true joy he feels in this state quickly shifts, as the Once-ler feels a need for something much greater. His need for materialistic items rather than true joy ends up taking everything he once loved about this paradise. He copes with his sadness and anger towards what he has done by burying his
According to religious beliefs, greed in one of the seven deadly sins. But there are people who believes that greed is good. Starting from Donald Trump to Novel Prize Winning Economist Milton Friedman share the same views. There are incentives if you are greedy, such that it forces you to thrive for success, which results to innovation. Donald Trump recently stated, “I’m very greedy…And greedy for the United States”. Andrew Weil, a physician featured in Time’s Magazine stated, “Fear and greed are potent motivators. When both of these forces push in the same direction, virtually no human being can resist”. But I was not convinced with these statements. Hence, I started doing research to decipher
If you have something already should be proud of what you have and not think of all the things you think you deserve because you can't get what you don't have without giving effort and the final result will be worse. Guy de Maupassant's parents got divorced when he was 11 and his mother was raising him alone. He always looked differently at the rich, so he decided to write a short story on how people should treat everything they have with care and not ask for more than you can afford because the final result may be worse. In "The Necklace" he develops his theme of how objects can change people through the literary terms situational irony and foreshadowing.
Loisel repaid the necklace together with their sweat and tears. Mathilde didn’t have a choice; she had to change from a vain, ungrateful, material, bored wife, into a hardworking proud and loving wife. She even says, right before she runs into Mme. Forestier, “What would have happened if she had not lost that necklace? Who knows? Who knows? How life is strange and changeful! How little a thing is needed for us to be lost or to be saved!”(39) In that quote I saw 2 things, when she asked herself what would have happened if she didn’t lose the necklace, she doesn’t go into some fairytale about what life she could be living, she just accepts what she is now, even if it’s not the easiest life in the world. At the very end of that quote “How little a thing is needed for us to be lost or to be saved!”(39) The fact that she added “or to be saved!” to her thought, tells me that she realizes that she was vain and unappreciated and that she lacked character, but now she is grateful, even though it was such a terrible thing, she was grateful that she was able to say that she was a better person now, even after everything that happened to her than she ever “dreamed” of being before. Guy de Maupassant certainly described a very difficult hardship for Mathilde in “The Necklace” but in the end, everything that happened to her, made her a much better and stronger woman inside and out. This story teaches a very important lesson, you have no idea what you can do and who you can become, until your chips are down and you’re put between a rock and a hard
Ten years of suffering is the cost of having pleasure for only one night! In “The Necklace,” by Guy de Maupassant presents Mathilde Loisel, an attractive, charming but vacuous and selfish middle class lady transforms to selfness, poor, satisfied and hard-working lady. Even though, Mathidle owns a comfortable home and married to a faithful and kind husband, Monsieur Loisel, who seeks her happiness and satisfaction; she was ungrateful to the things that she had been given, because her greed and desire of wealth had captured her thoughts and blurred the real meaning of happiness in her perspective. Mathidle spends most of her time surfing in her day dreams of being wealthy and suffering from accepting the reality, because her imagination was more than she could not afford. One day Mathidle’s husband brought his wife an invitation for a fancy party, but as a result of their low income, Mathidle’s was ashamed to wear flowers as decoration, so she decided to borrow an expensive looking necklace from a friend of her, Madame Forestier. After attending the fabulous party and spending a memorable great time looking stunningly beautiful, Mathidle discovers that she had lost the expensive necklace that she borrowed, so she decides to buy a similar copy of the necklace to her friend after loaning an enormous amount of money and narrowing the house outcome. The author surprises his readers with a perfectly detailed twist at the end of the story. Losing the necklace was a turning point in Mathidle’s life and the best thing that ever happened to her.
Maupassant delighted me with this story. I especially liked how he present the character Mathilde, she seemed to be extremely ungrateful with her mediocre life. She dreamed of wealth and fame and it seemed like nothing would please her. She focused so much on her desire to have social status that when she got the opportunity to go a social gathering with elite members of society, she would not go unless she had a fancy dress and fancy necklace. For one night, she felt like “somebody”. I found this story to display themes of gross vanity, irony and suffering. Because in the end Mathilde worked hard to replace the necklace that she presumed was real. She was never able to have another day of pleasure or go out to any other events. She made such a big deal of the one event, she lost herself in the feeling of being social accepted by a higher class in society.
Around the world, values are expressed differently. Some people think that life is about the little things that make them happy. Others feel the opposite way and that expenses are the way to live. In Guy de Maupassant’s short story, “The Necklace”, he develops a character, Madame Loisel, who illustrates her different style of assessments. Madame Loisel, a beautiful woman, lives in a wonderful home with all the necessary supplies needed to live. However, she is very unhappy with her life. She feels she deserves a much more expensive and materialistic life than what she has. After pitying herself for not being the richest of her friends, she goes out and borrows a beautiful necklace from an ally. But as she misplaces the closest thing she has to the life she dreams of and not telling her friend about the mishap, she could have set herself aside from ten years of work. Through many literary devices, de Maupassant sends a message to value less substance articles so life can be spent wisely.
It is said that “everything that shines isn't gold.” A difficult situation can result a vast illusion that is not what one thought it would be, which leads to disappointment and despair. Just like Guy De Maupassant stories, “The Necklace” and “The Jewel.” In the first story, the protagonist, Mathilde Loisel’s need for materialistic fulfillment causes her hard labor which ends her natural beauty. In the second story, the husband Monsieur Latin ends up living a dreadful life due to the passing of his wife and her admiration for jewels. “The Necklace” and “The Jewel” both share many similarities such as the unconditional love each husband haves toward their wife, the necessity each wife haves towards materialistic greed, the beautiful allurement
In the short story “The Necklace”, the main character, Loisel, is a woman who dreams of greater things in her life. She is married to a poor clerk who tries his best to make her happy no matter what. In an attempt to try to bring happiness to his wife, he manages to get two invitations to a very classy ball, but even in light of this Loisel is still unhappy. Even when she gets a new dress she is still unhappy. This lasts until her husband suggests she borrows some jewelry from a friend, and upon doing so she is finally happy. Once the ball is over, and they reach home, Loisel has the horrible realization that she has lost the necklace, and after ten years of hard labor and suffering, they pay off debts incurred to get a replacement. The central idea of this story is how something small can have a life changing effect on our and others life’s. This idea is presented through internal and external conflicts, third person omniscient point of view, and the round-dynamic character of Loisel. The third person limited omniscient point-of-view is prevalent throughout this short story in the way that the author lets the reader only see into the main character’s thoughts. Loisel is revealed to the reader as being unhappy with her life and wishing for fancier things. “She suffered ceaselessly, feeling herself born for all the delicacies and all the luxuries.” (de Maupassant 887) When her husband tries to fancy things up, “she thought of dainty dinners, of shining silverware, of tapestry which peopled the walls…” (de Maupassant 887) As the story goes on her point of view changes, as she “now knew the horrible existence of the needy. She took her part, moreover all of a sudden, with heroism.” (de Maupassant 891) Having the accountability to know that the “dreadful debt must be paid.” (de Maupassant 891 ) This point-of-view is used to help the reader gain more insight to how Loisel’s whole mindset is changed throughout her struggle to pay off their debts. Maupassant only reveals the thoughts and feelings of these this main character leaving all the others as flat characters. Loisel is a round-dynamic character in that Maupassant shows how she thought she was born in the wrong “station”. “She dressed plainly because she could not dress well, but she was as unhappy as though she had really fallen from her proper station.
every man's greed.” But , is being greedy really bad? does not greed , ultimately, motivates one
Guy de Maupassant is a realist whose claim to fame is the style in which he conveys political and socioeconomic themes in his literary publications. He achieves his writing style by putting small unfortunate life events under a spotlight. His literary performance is described in his biography from Cambridge, the writer says “He exposes with piercing clarity the small tragedies and pathetic incidents of everyday life, taking a clear-sighted though pessimistic view of humanity” (Halsey, par. 1). Guy de Maupassant’s story The Necklace is a great representation of the style he uses. In The Necklace the main character Mathilde Loisel a beautiful but impoverished woman married to a clerk is in conflict with her lack of wealth and desire to acquire
Mathilde Loisel grew up in the working class and had no expectations in life. Mathilde settled for a lifestyle she was unhappy with. When she got married, she and her husband would sit around the dinner table and imagine they were eating a luxurious meal. Together, they had nothing. Mathilde had no clothes, no jewels, and only one friend (who was rich). Mathilde dreamt of wealth, fine clothes, and a beautiful house. She knew that those dreams were unrealistic and unattainable.