Literary Devices In The Necklace And The Gift Of The Magi

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The Influence of Literary Devices
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. …show more content…

When Forestier says yes, she brings out a large jewel box and tells Mathilde to choose which necklace she wants. Mathilde looks through the necklaces and couldn’t find a necklace she liked. Until she saw the perfect necklace. She described it as “a superb diamond necklace.” Maupassant is deliberately misleading the reader here so that when Mathilde asks to borrow the necklace, and her friend says, “why, yes, certainly”, they think that it's weird that Forestier is just letting someone borrow her very expensive diamond necklace. In comparison, in “The Gift of the Magi” foreshadowing was used when Della, the main character, was crying because she only had $1.87 to buy a gift for Jim, her husband. While she was crying, she was staring out the window sadly until she suddenly whirled around from the window and “her eyes were shining brilliantly, but her face lost color within twenty seconds.” When her eyes shined brilliantly it foreshadowed that she had thought of a plan, but when her face lost color very quickly, it foreshadowed that she would have to make a hard

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