Wants vs. Needs
Wants vs. needs. They are both very different things. Things like air, water, and food are needs but other things like the newest cell phone or those beautiful diamond earrings are not. So how do we decide what we want vs. what we need?
In the story The Necklace by Guy de Maupssant the subject of wants comes into play the most. The young, pretty, and charming girl named Mathilde is living the life she feels she does not deserve and is married to a man she was not hoping for, “She suffered constantly, feeling that all the attributes of a gracious life, every luxury, should have rightfully been hers (pg.373).” One night she is given an invite to a ball but was complaining about not going because she had nothing to wear, “I haven't a thing to wear. How could I go?” (pg.375). She goes to her friend and gets a diamond necklace to borrow for the night but, by the end of the evening she finds the necklace is gone. She waste her whole life to pay it back after buying a new one to replace it when she finds out, years later, the necklace was fake.
…show more content…
A man by the name of Jonathan and his family come out of the forest after a long and hard war. The first thing you hear from this character is that he is grateful to be alive. “He had come out of the war with five inestimable blessings- his head, his wife Maria’s head, and the heads of three out of their four children” (pg.389). He was happy to have even the little things like his old, small house still standing and his bike, “As a bonus he also had his old bicycle” (pg.389). He and his family went through so much so when he found he even had small things others around him did not, he was beyond grateful, “Nothing puzzles God”
Greed is a present theme throughout Maupassant’s short story ‘The Necklace’. Greed is a predominate trait in one character in particular, Mathilde Loisel. Mathilde wants to be wealthy and lives in a fantasy world built around this utopian world she builds in her head. Her husband does everything in his own power to accommodate to his wife’s delusions of being rich.
The Necklace is a great example of how our desires can create tragedy rather than happiness. Madame Forestier would have rather been idolized for her wealth instead of buying items that grant her survival. She says,”It’s just that I have no evening dress and so I can’t go to the party.” which explains well how she had a finite amount of money and thought material wealth was more important than happiness. If she only knew before that she would spend the next decade working off her debt, she would have never asked for the necklace and she would have had a happy life. Furthermore, wealth isn’t the only thing that brings happiness to a life.
An example of why people should not put their wants before their needs, is from the short story, “ The Necklace.” by Guy de Maupassant, about a woman named Mathilde, who wants to be nothing short of wealthy, classy, and upper class. Little did she know, she was better off living the way she was, and fulfilling her needs. She ends up getting invited to a ball, and borrows a diamond necklace from her good friend Madame Forister, and realizes by the end of the night that the necklace is gone. “ What’s the matter?” asked Mathilde’s husband. “ The… the necklace… it’s gone” ( Maupassant, 377).
Guy de Maupassant’s The Necklace expresses the theme of being spoiled and ungrateful will only make things worse in many ways. Mathilde Loisel is a beautiful woman who is born into a family of poor clerks and feels she has nothing even though she wishes to have the best of everything. At times she can be charming and elegant, but she also possesses the unpleasant traits of being spoiled and ungrateful as shown in the story multiple times.
All that women need for their clothing is here with us. In our website www.alneed.com, we offer women casual loose cotton linen clothes to every woman who desires to have a good look. You can purchase any new collection on our website at a reasonable price. All you need is to shop with confidence for our good quality products and be guaranteed that you will love our new collection Here are some of the products that you can purchase with us.
“Needs” normally provide more identifiable patterns, making the information regarding its patterns easier to analyze. A want is more of a desire, which is limitless and easily targeted. It is the things that a person would buy if money was not an option. Wants are often used to filled voids, or give social satisfactions, while needs are things required similarly by each person. Understanding that idea, it’s been shown that wants are more profitable because wants provide an opportunity to not only create new wants, but to also have a larger change in price, due to the desire (demand) for it.
Values are spread all around the world, and many people’s values differ. These can lead to people being judged, or indirectly characterized by other people. In “The Necklace” Mme. Loisel is a beautiful woman with a decent life, and a husband that loves her, and only wants to make her happy. She is not rich but she makes it along, she insists of a better, wealthier life. When her husband gets her invited to a ball, she feels the need for a brand new fancy dress and tons of jewelry. When the couple realizes they cannot afford jewelry as well, they search out to borrow her friend, Mme. Forestiers’ necklace. She comes to notice she no longer has the necklace on when she leaves the ball. This later troubles her, as she has to work for a long time to collect enough money to buy a new necklace. This story describes the relationship between a couple, who have different dreams, and how desires can revamp your life. Guy de Maupassant, the author of “The Necklace” uses literary devices to prove people come before materialistic items.
Both texts depict loss faced by the main characters. One of these texts, ‘The Necklace’, tells the story of Mrs Loisel, a middle class woman living around late twentieth century France. Having a luxury craving nature, after losing a necklace she thought was inestimable, spends the rest of her life repaying it, only to find out the necklace was an imitation. The content of the text is put into an order describing in short her past, outlining her personality and dreams and then follows her life from the time at which her husband announces the invitation to a party. ‘Disabled’ is a poem written by the famous poet Wilfred Owen.
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.
“Happiness resides not in possessions, and not in gold, happiness dwells in the soul” (Democritus). The Necklace composed by Guy de Maupassant and O.Henry’s The Gift of the Magi both revolve around married couples and how they cope with their current financial status. The Necklace depicts the life of a poor Parisian couple, the Loisels, in which the woman, Mathilde, bases her happiness on materialistic wealth. Overall, the story displays the fact that sometimes the things that one desires is not what they actually need. On the other hand, The Gift of the Magi is centered on a young couple, the Youngs as they adjust to life in a small flat. In this story, O.Henry stresses the lengths that one is capable of going to in order to please their significant other. These stories consist of similarities and differences, which are
Authors choose to use symbols for various reasons in short stories. It is a way for them to use on object or idea to convey many different meanings to the audience. In “The Necklace,” the author Guy de Maupassant uses a very lavish looking necklace as his main symbol. The necklace helps defining what type of woman Mme. Loisel is. It also acts as the central conflict of the story. The symbolism that is used throughout this story is crucial to revealing the theme and understanding the main character.
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.
Never accept anything and you will never be disappointed. The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant is translated from French to English by John Siscoe.This story , as the title suggests, focuses on the necklace. As the necklace is given the symbolism of wealth , royalty, friendship, self respect and at last an ornament. Mathilde Loisel, young and married, has felt that she has attracted men at the ball and has relieved her wish of being rich by wearing dresses and a “diamond” necklace. This story has situational Irony. To mathilde the necklace was suppose to be one night thing ; ironically necklace takes a decade of her life.
The moral of Guy de Maupassant’s story “The Necklace” seems to be suggested by the line, “What would have happened if Mathilde had not lost the necklace?” If Mathilde had not lost the necklace, or in fact, even asked to borrow the necklace, she and Mr. Loisel would not of been in debt ten long years. Because Mathilde had to borrow the necklace to make herself and others like her better her and Mr. Loisel’s economic situation had become worse than it already was. I think that the moral of the story is that people need to be happy with what they have and not be so greedy.