The Necklace

For ten years of your life, you work at your hardest to pay off a piece of jewelry. Then, you find out that the piece of jewelry was fake and wasn’t even worth half of what you paid for it. Wouldn’t this make you feel irritated and make you think that you spent a decade of your time devoted to working? In the story of, “The Necklace”, by Guy de Maupassant, this precise tragedy happens to a woman named Mathilde Loisel and her husband when they borrow a piece of jewelry and they lose it during the nights events. The symbols and the and the mode of literature reflect off of each other in an immense way, all because of a few objects and some events of importance.

Two symbols that were relatively similar to each other were the dress and the flowers that Mithilde’s husband mentioned. They both had to do with them being middle-class people. She wanted a dress that would show that she had money when, really, she didn’t. Since this made her feel important and unique, that is what it symbolized; importance and uniqueness. Whereas, the flowers that Mr. Loisel talked about symbolized that they were poor. Mathilde even said it herself. There was nothing worse than a poor person in the middle of a bunch of rich ones. Then comes the most important symbol of all; the necklace. It symbolized the good and bad in her. I say that it symbolized bad because it brought out the greediness in her. This led to losing the necklace. Eventually, she wasted a great amount of her life working for money to pay it off. It symbolized the fineness in her because it showed that she could also be very graceful. She showed this while she was at the fancy ball.

The symbol of the necklace in the story is important, but the mode of literature is just as significant. You automatically know that is a comedy because it begins with normalcy when Mathilde and her husband are having dinner and talking about the ball. Next, there is a conflict that arises; she doesn’t have a dress to wear and then she loses the necklace. After that, she realizes the conflict; she has lost the “valuable” necklace. Finally, there is a resolution. Mathilde and her husband work for years to pay off the necklace. The bad thing about it though, is that then is the time that she finds that the necklace was fake all along, meaning she wasted her time on something that wasn’t at all necessary.

The mode of literature and the symbols had much in common and they all reflected off of each other. They also teach us a lesson; be happy with who you are and what you have. Otherwise we may end up like poor Mathilde, in the story, and wind up having to “pay” a much higher price for all of our unnecessary actions.