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Essay prompt on the theme of greed
Greed in literature essay
Essay prompt on the theme of greed
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In the short story ¨The Necklace” by Guy de Maupassant, the greediness and ungratefulness of Madame Loisel undoubtedly mirrors the selfishness hidden within all of us. The first way Madame Loisel is portrayed as greedy and ungrateful is because she is a very materialistic woman. In the story, it is expressed that gowns and jewels are the only items she loves. We see this when Monsieur Loisel, her husband, gives her an invitation to a ball, and instead of being excited, she is upset because she doesn’t have anything to wear. However, after she does buy a dress, with the money her husband gave her, she almost doesn’t go because she has no jewels. Even when she goes to her friend’s, Madame Forestier, house, she kept asking if she had “anything
In “The Necklace” by Guy de Maupassant the character Madame Loisel was always longing for expensive possessions, larger
Guy de Maupassant expresses his theme through the use of situational irony. Guy de Maupassant says, “She suffered endlessly, feeling herself born for every delicacy and luxury. She suffered from the poorness of her house. All these things, of which other women of her class would not even have been aware, tormented and insulted her.”(De Maupassant). She is poor and thinks of herself too much and then he says "but she was as unhappy as though she had married beneath her; for women have no caste or class.”(De Maupassant). She wants more than she can get which will ruin her later in the story. When she lost the necklace by the end of the week they had lost all hope to find it. Loisel, who had aged five years, declared:
Mathilde Loisel is a woman who wants more than what she has, and is often dishonest. The short story The Necklace, by Guy de Maupassant, is about honesty and reveals that if you are honest, things turn out to be a lot better for you. Mathilde Loisel is unhappy with her current life, and her husband gets them an invitation to a party. She buys dresses with his money, and borrows a necklace from her friend, Madame Forestier. However, she loses the necklace and is dishonest, returning a substitute necklace to her friend and working for ten years with her husband to pay off the loans used to pay for it. She later learns if she had been honest, she would have not gone through that trouble. Madame Forestier, her friend of whom she had borrowed the necklace from, had owned an imitation of a necklace, not a real necklace.
She is getting by in life, isn’t to poor nor overly rich. When her husband gives her an invintation to a very formal ball, she is astonished at the fact that he thinks she can attend in the things she owns. So Madame Loisel goes out and buys a nice dress and borrows jewlrey from her friend. She attends the ball and has a wonderful time. When she arrives how she is horrfied to see that she has lost the diamond necklace that her friend Madame Forestier lent her. After searching for the necklace for hours on end, she buys an expensive replacement and hopes that Madame Forestier won’t notice. After 10 years of hard work, Mathilde and her husband finish paying off the debt of the necklace. Throughout those 10 years, Mathilde saw what it was like to really struggle in life. She realizes that her life before wasn’t all that bad. One day, old and worn down Mathilde sees Madame Forestier in the street. She says hello to her friend and tells her about all the hardships she went to because of the lost necklace. Madame Forestier responds that her necklace was only worth 500 francs at most… way less than what Mathilde had payed for the replacement, and wasn’t even real diamond. This is ironic because Mathilde spent all those years paying of a replacement that was way more money than the original.
In the short story “The Necklace,” the author Guy de Maupassant describes the life of a woman named Madame Loisel. Loisel spends endless hours imagining a more extravagant existence and dreads her poverty intensely. One night, her husband returns with an invitation to a formal ball and hopes that Madame Loisel would be excited as she doesn't get to go out much. Instead, she is upset because she feels like she has nothing nice to wear and no jewelry at all. Her greed comes back at her in the end when the necklace she loses is worth next to nothing, compared to the hardships they went through. There are many key literary elements that the author uses to help the reader understand the story well. Maupassant uses imagery, characterization, and irony to make the story much more interesting and vibrant for the reader.
Madame Loisel was a proud woman who was extremely poorly along with her husband, who earned a low amount of money, but she dreamed of being someone who owned extravagant clothing and jewelry that was worth plenty of money. Someone who has money would be seen as a highly respectable person who was elegant and looked up to. This could be seen in paragraph 3 where it says, “The modest clothes of an ordinary life, whose poverty contrasted sharply with the elegance of the ball dress.” Madame Loisel for example, wanted to pretend to be a high class individual while in reality she was only an average poor person. She had not realized what it actually took to acquire the money needed to a fine women so all she could do was dream. She did not value the life she had where she did not have to work and all she had to do was stay home and clean. Also in paragraph Add Paragraph “She had become strong, hard and rough like all women of impoverished households.” This helps develop the idea that valuable items have an emotional attachment because the necklace was so valuable money wise but it also helped her develop a different personality that was more accepting to what she had already. The necklace represented something to her that she could never own on her own but in the process of being selfish and greedy she learned many values of life. Treasurable
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
The theme that I perceive in “The Necklace”, by Guy De Maupassant, is self-indulgence and egotism. Marry to a clerk who was unable to give her a decent (luxury) life due to scarcity; Mathilde can only imagine those beautiful and expensive things start to develop a life of self-indulgence and pride. While exercising the concept of self-indulgence, she envy her rich friend
In Guy de Maupassant’s “The Necklace,” Mathilde is mesmerized by objects people of her class cannot afford. She longs to have materialistic items and to live a different life that she leads. The problems that she experiences, including misplacing a borrowed, expensive necklace, shows the readers that hard work pays off. Mathilde learns by the end of the story that telling the truth and owning up to mistakes made eventually pays off in the long run. Mathilde Loisel’s personality at the beginning of “The Necklace” presents themes of desire and greed, but as the story continues, the theme shifts to one of humility as Mathilde changes.
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.
The debt for the necklace had to be paid off and she would help pay for it. She began “to know the heavy work of the house, the hateful duties of the kitchen.” She washed dishes, dirty linen, shirts and dish-cloths, then hung them out to dry. Madame Loisel “like a poor woman, she went to the fruiter, to the grocer, to the butcher, a basket on her arm, haggling, insulted, fighting for every wretched halfpenny of her money.” After ten years of doing this, she looked old now. Madame Loisel’s “hair was badly done, her skirts were awry, her hands were red.” For a one night of beauty, Madame Loisel was punished by paying it off for ten years and losing her
Greed and Pride can can blind us from the truth. Living in disregard of everyone and everything and in a false perception of reality. What we possess is more important than what we have and our pride won't let us see true value until we lose it. In “The Necklace” by Guy de Maupassantant, Mathilde Loisel is introduced as a beautiful and charming young lady who is discontent with her life because she feels she is deserving of more “She dressed plainly because she could not dress well, but she was unhappy as if she had really fallen from a higher station; since with women there is neither caste nor rank, for beauty, grace and charm take the place of family and birth” (46). Throughout “The Necklace” Mathilde is truly unhappy and sees no value in her manner of living……
The Necklace also displays distinctive realism in the use of socioeconomic influences which are essential to the plot. The major conflict in the story would be absent and the theme would not be obtainable without Mathilde Loisel’s insecurity about her own socioeconomic reputation. An example of Loisel’s self-deprivation nature is presented when she realizes she does not have a necklace, she says “I shall look absolutely no one. I would almost rather not go to the party” (Maupassant, sec. 3). Another example of the self-conflict caused by social pressure is Loisel’s immediate attempt to replace the necklace and her reluctance to speak to her friend Madame Forestier about the necklace for ten whole years. If she were not conflicted by societal pressures she might have avoided the whole situation altogether. The Necklace establishes a realistic difference in value between the necklaces and proposed clothing. Her husband proposes flowers which were valued 10 franks so in any case if she had chosen the flowers there would have been an insignificant economic loss. Her decision not to tell her friend about the necklace ends up costing her seven times the worth of the original. The roses symbolize the simpler things in life to the theme of the story. Mathilde Loisel’s withered appearance at the end
Even though Madame Loisel hadn’t visited her in a while, and was envious of her life, she knew that Madame Forestier was her only viable option. Her school friend was gracious enough to help Madame Loisel when asked for jewelry. Madame Forestier brought out a large box filled with pearls necklaces, bracelet, and gold cross, all there for her choosing. Madame Loisel although aware of the beauty of the various pieces couldn’t make up her mind, and constantly asked if there was anything else. Still as she has throughout the story seemed unsatisfied with her option and wanted better. Finally she came upon the diamond necklace and at once decided she must have it. Finally satisfied Madame Loisel donned her beautiful new dress, and finished the look with the exquisite borrowed diamond necklace.
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.