Maupassant
A watchmaker and haberdasher from Paris, a peasant from Goderville, and an unhappy woman from Martyr Street, are all intertwined in Maupassant's writing. Guy de Maupassant, the famed nineteenth century French Storyteller distinctively outlines the bitterness, brutality, and pessimism that these four characters experience in his three short stories, "Two Friends," "The Piece of String," and "The Necklace." The author embraces their brutality and ferocity of man (Lemaitre). His characters are all in some way governed by blind instincts that lead to their fall. Maupassant's pessimistic outlook on life rises to the surface in "Two Friends," "The Piece of String," and "The Necklace."Beneath the famine and agony in Paris during the Franco-Prussian War, Maupassant portrays a pessimistic view of life when two friends search for consolation in their lives to overcome their difficulties with a fishing trip, only to have their lives turned upside down. M. Morissot, a respected watchmaker and M. Sauvage, an esteemed haberdasher, change to become local militiamen, not by choice but by authority; consequently are deeply affected by great troubles. "Every Sunday, before the war, M. Morissot left at dawn, bamboo pol
Most startlingly, the pessimism of Maupassant's victims does not cease; in fact, in "The Necklace," it actually appears to increase. His next victim is a women born to luxury and wealth who lets herself be married off to a little clerk in the Ministry of Education. "She was one of those pretty and charming girls born, as though fate had blundered over her, into a family of artisans," ("The Necklace" 296). Mme. Loisel suffers endlessly, from the destitution of her home, from the hideous curtains to the worn-out chairs. She feels she should be in the upper class and should not be faced with such difficulties. She dreams of being wealthy, of having vast saloons and elegant pieces of furniture; besides that, she imagines graceful meals, and most of all, she wants beautiful clothes and jewels of which she had none. Even though her husband tries to make her happy by getting a maid so she will not have to do the housework, she is always full of regrets. Her husband is a hardworking educator who scrapes every penny for his wife, even sacrificing his own riches for her. When of a journey in a town of Goderville where a piece of string produces surprising overtones and renounces" (Sullivan). Maitre Hauchecome of Breaute an economical Norman, with a shrewd personality that proves to be a negative trait when he is accused of theft, stumbles upon a piece of string on his way toward the public square; in spite of his rheumatism, he bends to pick it up ("The Piece of String" 4). Coincidentally, that day a pocketbook that contains five hundred francs and some business papers is lost. Maitre Malandain,
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Approximate Word count = 1081
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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