Groucho Marx once said” While money can’t buy you happiness, it certainly lets you choose your own form of misery.” People pretend to lose sight of what’s important. In the short story, “the Necklace” the women Mathilde Loisel feels a burden of her poverty and imagines a more extravagant existence. In “In La Riconada” all the gold was taken. The other short story, “King Midas”, was about a king who wished everything he touched turned into gold. In “The Necklace”, Mathilde feels she has been born into a family of unfavorable economic status. She’s so focused on what she doesn’t have. She forgets about her husband who treats her good. She gets too carried away being someone someone
When we are little, we all dream of having big fancy houses, lavish cars and everything else that money can buy. However, we find that when people have this kind of lifestyle they are often broken and wanting a kind of life that you cant purchase. “Rich Kids” by Judah and the Lion, describes a life of wealth but not in the money sense. They talk of how we spend most of life trying to become rich and live these extravagant lives, when those material things will never bring us real joy. Mme Loisel wasn't the richest lady, but she had enough. She also had a husband who cared deeply for her and would do anything too see her desires met. However, later in the story she finds that money can only bring her joy for a short time, and then
The stories dissatisfied family demonstrates the adverse psychological effects that arise from the insatiable desire for money. The family’s desirous yearn for more money causes a crazy obsession amongst them. Obsession is described as the domination of a person’s thoughts or feelings by a persistent idea, image or desire (Dictonary.com). Obsession is first seen in the family as the narrator describes them,“there was never enough [money]….there was always the grinding sense of the shortage of money…” (Lawrence 36). Although the family’s basic financial needs are met, they are unsatisfied, and continue to want more. The young main character, Paul, is consumed with the obsession of money. Paul’s maddening obsession climaxes as he savagely rocks on his rocking-horse in hopes of picking ...
Zora Hurston's “The Gilded Six Bits” is a short story that focuses on the theme of a lust for power. The story tells of a young couple, Joe and Missie May, who are happily married. Each Saturday after work, Joe throws silver dollars through the door and enters with other indulgent goodies he may have brought home to Missie May. The couple does not have a rich home or a lot of money, but it seems as if they are happy with what they have until a seemingly rich man named Otis Slemmons comes into town. After meeting Mr. Slemmons, Joe and Missie May’s marriage is put in jeopardy due to their lust for power. In addition to this theme, the author uses money as a metaphor to highlight the characters’ desire for such empowerment.
Mathilde Loisel is an unappreciative, materialistic, vain woman who lives life depressed about the simplicity of her surroundings, so she spends much of her time daydreaming about the glamorous life she was born for. “She suffered constantly, feeling herself destined for all delicacies and luxuries.” Mathilde’s husband, Mr. Loisel, is a respectable man who prefers a simple life. He loves his wife very much; her happiness is his primary concern. In her desperate attempt to ...
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
Surprise, love, and regret. These are theme topics for “ The Necklace” by Guy de Maupassant and for “The Gift of the Magi” by O. Henry. In Maupassant's story the main character, Mathilde Loisel, longs to portray someone who is rich.To do this she borrows a diamond necklace from one of her friends to attend a party. While she was at the party, she lost the necklace and decided not to tell her friend. Instead, she bought a new necklace. In another story, “ The Gift of the Magi” a poor couple wants to get great Christmas gifts for each other to show their love, but neither of them have enough money. These stories have three similarities each. Each author uses foreshadowing, situational irony, and internal conflict to communicate the story.
The author of "The Necklace", Guy de Maupassant, relates the setting to Mathilde throughout the story. The central character in "The Necklace" is Mathilde. She dreams many dreams of rich living and high society. Her dwellings throughout "The Necklace" show her mood towards the way she is forced to live.
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.
...tory is basically based on the necklace itself. In fact it almost seems as if the theme of the story instead was related to the definition of “deceiving” or “lying.” It doesn’t become obvious until the end of the story when Mathilde is faced once again with Mme. Forestier and it’s then made clear that the fallacy that Mathilde had was all wrong. Guy De Maupassant makes Mathilde seem foolish when Mme. Forestier tells her the truth about the necklace price and Mathilde is somewhat seemed as a fool. All her traumas of being “poor” are almost as if it backfired on her, because she was unhappy and kept complaining of her life.
The saying “money can not buy you happiness”, would be used to describe the moral of the short story, “The Necklace”. In Guy de Maupassant’s “The Necklace”, he artfully uses short and simple sentence structure, as well as the inclusion of specific word choices, to build a story full of symbolism. The necklace itself is the key symbol used to develop the primary theme that material items are only as valuable as they are perceived to be and that a person’s value is not based off of their material possessions.
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
Mathilde at first only cares about having luxurious items. She was always unhappy that she didn't have materialistic things. In paragraph 4 it says, “She dreamed of expensive banquets with shining place-settings, and wall hangings depicting ancient heroes and exotic birds in an enchanted forest.” She spent all her time wishing she was living a different life like her friend Jeanne who she had gone to school with. At school after learning how to act properly like a rich person, she didn’t like that she had all this knowledge and was not able to use it.
In the novel “The Necklace” the author gives several things that shows symbolism. The first symbol of the short story “The Necklace” gives us is the main character’s name… Mathilde. The story mentions “She was one of those pretty and charming girls”. This is close to the meaning of Mathilde. The meaning of Mathilde’s name was very ironic to her life, the story quotes, “as if by mistake of destiny, born in a family of clerks. She had no dowry, no expectations, no means of being known, understood, loved wedded, by any rich and distinguished man; and she let herself be married to a little clerk at the Ministry of Public Instruction. Mathilde valued expensive and exquisite things, because she believed that it would make her social status look
The story “The Star”, which was written in 1970’s, is trying to say that we need to understand the truth of our fate rather than put on blinders and quit refusing everything else that we don’t want to see. In the story “The Necklace” written by Guy De Maupassant the woman worked herself to the bone for ten years trying to pay off the debt used to pay for the necklace she lost at the ball. The woman in this story is a poor pretty woman who thought she deserved a better life than one that she already had. The main character in this story is a woman named Louis, the daughter of simple working class man. Both stories include a sub theme of a hope for a better life, in which all men were created equal and all the ugly injustices in the world would cease to exist. But the cold hard fact is that we humans have this innate sense of optimism, which blocks our thinking for reality, because without it we would have no reason for living.
Wanting more and better is one of the quality that we all have. In the stories “The Necklace” and “The Gift of the Magi”, both writers illustrate the consequences of greed. One would wonder if people do fine much happiness through their search for material? Perhaps greed does make one’s happy at times, but because of greed people bury themselves in the bottomless pit of pain and suffering. A dust material such as a shiny watch fob or a sparkling necklace get the fake adoration that one seeks. In the end the price that is paid to obtain something materialistic is too much. “The Necklace” by Guy De Maupassant and “The Gift of the Magi” by O Henry develop