The Use Of Imagery In The Necklace By Guy De Maupassant

Imagery has always been a great element which pilots the meaning of mood and meaning of stories and poems. Found in the Chinese sites and sights in the Mulan movie, The Blue Seas underwater and heavenly scenes in One Piece TV series, and the dark and gritty streets of London in the Sherlock Holmes novels, imagery bolstered the meaning and mood components of a story or poem. Guy de Maupassant is one of the most notable French authors that has written fantastic shorts such as “The Necklace,” a story concerning an unwitty couple’s gigantic misunderstanding, and “Two Friends,” a story concerning a patriotic friendship that conveys de Maupassant’s anger of The War. By using imagery, de Maupassant guided the mood and meaning of the two story in different and impactful ways. Part of what imagery can accomplish for a story is setting the mood of either what is at present or what is to come. De Maupassant established the respective moods for the two stories in a very subtle yet impactful manner. For example, in the “The Necklace” we can observer the following: “She was distressed at the poverty of her dwelling, at the bareness of the walls, at the shabby chairs, the ugliness of the curtains...She

As good example of how de Maupassant ability to use imagery to setup the explanation of the “The Necklace” couple’s misunderstanding, he using the following lines: “And she smiled with a joy that was at once proud and ingenuous. Madame Forestier, deeply moved, took her hands.” After spending a decade to pay off the replacement necklace the female protagonist lost, the character smiles as though a grand accomplishment has been made, yet we see the friend is not in a similarly joyful disposition. Instead the friend, realizing the grand misunderstand and its impact to the couple, took the female protagonist’s hand and explained the truth behind the necklace she