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Guy De Maupassant's biography and his work
Guy De Maupassant's biography and his work
Guy De Maupassant's biography and his work
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The story “The False Gems” is filled with many mixed messages. It leaves its readers puzzled at first and then leads into deeper meaning and different perspectives. So, what is the true meaning of this short story? This is a question that could have many answers but some seem to stand out. This short story was written by Guy de Maupassant in the 1900’s and makes people reconsider their very morals. Lots of messages could be taken from this story. One message that seems evident in the story is “Money Can’t Buy Happiness”. This message is shown in many different forms throughout this story. Another message that is displayed in the story is that “What You Don’t Know Won’t Hurt You”. In the case of this story, the message goes against almost every …show more content…
They always have some hero or good guy to make the right decisions. These stories also seem to have a kind moral to the story that usually can be helpful to the everyday person. Common morals of these could be anything from “Dream Big” to “Face Your Fears”. However, “The False Gems” doesn’t follow the typical guidelines that some stories might have. It shows a moral that happiness sometimes can be found by concealing the truth. This is something that is not shown in most children books. If anything, a common message would be to always tell the truth. It seems that Maupassant wanted to go against normal morality and almost wanted to show the readers a splash of reality. Showing that he was tired of typical meanings and ending to stories and decided to have the story end with tragedy and non-typical …show more content…
In “The False Gems” he portrays different messages that are somewhat hard to find in an almost depression story. A meaning that is evident is “Money Can’t Buy Happiness”. This meaning is evident in society and very common. It is in the story when Lantin is in his happiest state when he doesn’t know the jewelry is real and in love with his wife. Then when he receives the money from the jewels he is miserable. Another meaning is “What You Don’t Know Won’t Hurt You”, which is evident when Lantin is much more miserable when he actually knows how his wife had received the gems that he for so long thought was false. These messages are somewhat subliminal but can be pulled out of this very dark
Throughout the novel we see many incidence surrounding the aspect of money and gold. Sometimes when people receive a large sum of money they tend to let it all go to their head. They will spend their money on matericalistic accessories. The relationships they had with friends or family can drasticly change for the worse. Once greed takes over a person there is no telling what they will do or what obstacles they will knock out of their way. On...
A theme of the story is do not judge a book by its cover. "[That has] always seemed so ridiculous to me, that people would want to be around someone because [they are] pretty. [It is] like picking your breakfast cereals based on color instead of taste" (37). This shows how people look at something and judge what it is worth by what it looks like rather than what is inside. “Just remember
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.
Growing up watching fairy tales stories did not really have a meaning to me at first. As a child, I remember seeing them only as cartoons. From the Uses of Enchantment, by Bruno Bettelheim, he stated: “A child needs a moral education, not through abstract implication only, conveys to him the advantages of moral behavior, not through abstract ethical concepts but through that which seems tangibly right and therefore meaningful to him. The child finds this kind of meaning through fairy tales”. I find these sentences to have a strong meaning. In my opinion, it’s basically telling readers that stories are important in our lives and not only does it help us find our identities, but it also help us gain a sense of who we are. To begin
In lines 1-15 she discusses losing items in your life whether they are concrete or abstract. What she is trying to emphasize is that lose is something we automatically do making it easy to master. She wants us to realize that losing these items isn’t a bad move on our part but merely a habit. On line 5 she refers to her lost keys and line 10 her mother’s lost watch. Both items may seem important and have some value at the time but losing them won’t ruin her life. She makes the statement “lose something everyday” on line 4, and she is right we lose things everyday. We are constantly misplacing things and are never able to find them again. What is the point in fretting over that something you lost? Those keys and that watch may happen to be lost at the moment but they will be found and lost again it is the cycle it all goes through. When it boils down to it, it is no big deal whether you lose something or not; it happens. On line 5 she also discusses losing something more abstract, time. When she mentions “the hour badly spent” it reminds me of wasting time. In most live the wasting of time is a common occurrence. What she wants to tell us is that it is easy to waste time and shouldn’t be a big deal, since lose of time is something easy to master. That hour badly spent can be taken back and reused, so what would be the point in wasting more time by crying over that wasted time. Instead you could be doing something more with your time. In line 11 she refers to the three houses she los...
An example of this can be found in the quote, “She would dream of delicious dishes served on wonderful china, of gallant compliments whispered and listened to with a sphinxlike smile as one eats the rosy flesh of a trout or nibble at the wings of a grouse” (352). This quote occurs when Mme. Loisel is eating a dinner of stew with her husband. Her husband on one hand, is perfectly content with the stew and he quite enjoys it, Mme. Loisel on the other hand is not satisfied with the stew and dreams for bigger and better things. If it wasn’t already obvious enough, the stew symbolized the overall situation that Mme. Loisel and her husband were in. Her husband was very happy about the situation was, and he didn’t have any complaints about it. On the contrary, Mme. Loisel wasn’t content with their situation, she wanted more out of life than what she already had. However, the examples do not stop there. Believe it or not, the necklace itself is a symbol of Mme. Loisel’s slight loss of reality. The necklace that Mme. Loisel fell so madly in love with, may have been beautiful, but it was completely and utterly worthless, all a sham. The necklace represented the power of perception, along with the slight difference between fantasy and reality. Even though it was a fake, when she wore the necklace, she felt more wealthy, which in turn, made the people around her believe that she was wealthier too. The fact that the necklace is the result of the complete undoing of Mme. Loisel’s life as she knew it, leads me to infer that the story’s overall message is that nothing good ever comes from the denial of the reality of the
In examining the influence of Guy de Maupassant’s “The Necklace” and “Piece of String”, a similar form of figurative language is found. Situational irony, where an outcome is different from what was expected, is found in Maupassant’s short stories’ surprising and cruel endings. In “The Necklace” the protagonist, lost a diamond necklace, and ten years after struggling to pay off the replacement, she found the original was a fake. In Maupassant’s “Piece of String” the main character picked up a piece of string from the street and as a result of it, he was accused of theft and spent the rest of his life trying to prove his innocence. Guy de Maupassant’s short stories, “The Necklace” and “Piece of String,” were strongly influenced by his depressing life and Gustave Flaubert, his mentor, which resulted in developing main characters who faced unnecessary burdens.
As just a mere fairy-tale it tells a good story that aims to show that human nature prevents people from being equal and happy, or at least equally happy because someone is always more.
“Guy de Maupassant’s, “The Necklace”, is about a young couple who discovers the upper society appears to sparkles like a real diamond necklace, but in reality it is not always true. A decision that seems to protect their integrity turns out to tarnish it – like a fake necklace. However, through ironic insights we witness drama, character revelations and experience surprise” (Clugston, 2010) .The Necklace is told from a 3rd person point of view with limited omniscience. The title suggests that the plot will center on a necklace. So, naturally we, the audience or reader wants to know what the significance of the necklace is. After reading the story I believe that Maupassant used the necklace to symbolize the upper society or wealth. Another symbol that the necklace represents is appearance. In the story Mme. Loisel was a beautiful young woman that had admirers at the reception. She made all the attendees believe she was from...
There is nothing more precious and heartwarming than the innocence of a child. The majority of parents in society want to shield children from the bad in life which is appreciated. Within human nature exists desires of inappropriate behavior; envy, deceit, selfishness, revenge, violence, assault and murder. The most well-known fairy tales depict virtue and the evil in life. Even more important, the form and structure of fairy tales suggest images to the child by which he can structure his daydreams and with them give a better direction to his life. (Bettelheim).
There are two types of people in this world, there are those who are satisfied with what they have, and their are those who acquire more because they are not pleased with what they have, however ultimately that drive of wanting more can lead to learn a valuable lesson. In the necklace by Guy de Maupassant tells the story of a young woman and her husband who by greed and simply wanting more payed a price. Even though Mathilde had the utmost aspiration for what she desired and she is the one with the majority to blame. Nevertheless, she is partially to blame because her husband should have stepped in and been the bigger person, instead he fed her ego in what she wanted and at the end it led to a mighty disaster.
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.
These fairy tale poems inform us with a few stories of how a princesses or princes becomes Royal or not. In the other versions of these poems they consist of enchanted worlds and perfect finales where the princess usually goes from rags to riches. They have fooled us to believe that the world we live in is far from imperfect, which does not give us a realistic view on how cruel our society can actually be or how difficult it can be to even be considered royal. What we have seen on TV or read in fairy-tale books has given us false hope on how the world and the human beings are perceived because both can be assumed as innocent. Young kids have been kept from poems that focus on the less dreamlike side and more on the dark side.
In “The Jewelry,” Guy de Maupassant portrays the happy union of a loving couple with an unforeseen death. The wife’s infatuation with theatre and imitation jewelry causes the couple to grow apart and leads to the start of endless arguments. The husband goes through a dramatic change after the death of his wife, while slowing uncovering the truth about his marriage. Maupassant achieves his purpose in depicting the cruel reality by incorporating fervent diction, the symbol of deception and effusive imagery to convey that money and wealth cannot buy true happiness.
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.