Title: “The Necklace”
Author: Guy de Mauppassant
Point of View: Third Person
Setting
Time: 18th century, over ten years’ time.
Place: France
Mood: Depressing
Conflict: Man vs. Self – a woman’s struggle with wanting what she can’t have, and what she goes through after she tries to be something she’s not.
Theme: Don’t be greedy, jealousy/greed can lead to your downfall, Things aren’t always as they seem, be happy with what you’ve got, character is shown through actions and not fancy apparel.
Characters:
1. Name: Madame Mathilde Loisel
Personality description: Charming, selfish, jealous
Physical description: Pretty
2. Name: Monsieur Loisel
Personality description: unselfish, wimpy/pushed around, generous, hardworking, loves his wife, likes to hunt
3. Name: Madame Jeanne Forrestier
Personality description: Mathilde’s friend, kind, generous, trusting, wealthy
Plot Details:
Exposition – Learning about Madame and Monsieur Loisel and their background
Rising action – Receiving an invitation to the ball, buys a dress and borrows the necklace, has a wonderful time at the ball
Climax – Discovers the loss of the necklace, looks everywhere and cannot find it
Falling action – They buy a matching replacement and spend 10 years paying it off
Resolution – Madame Loisel comes clean to Madame Forrestier and finds out it was a fake.
Identify at least five literary elements used and cite examples from the text.
Alliteration – “Every possible physical privation.” “Attended the party and attracted everyone’s attention.” “She would weep whole days.” “whose wife will be turned out…” “…madame, I must have merely supplied the clasp.”
Flashback – “But sometimes, when her husband was at the office, she sat down by the window and thought of that evening long ago…”
Foreshadowing – Madame Forrestier easily lends her the necklace. The jeweler says, “It was not I who sold her the necklace, I merely supplied the clasp.”
Runs down the stairs at the ball
Imagery – “Her hair was badly done, her skirts were awry, her hands were red.
She spoke in a shrill voice and the water slopped all over the floor when she scrubbed it.”
Irony – See Irony WS
Metaphor – “She seemed to float through a cloud of happiness.” “she danced madly, drunk with pleasure.”
“Loisel, who had aged five years…”
Personification – “mean walls”
Simile – “One of those old night-prowling carriages which are only to be seen in Paris after dark, as though they are ashamed.”
Symbolism – Fake jewels = beautiful and simple life, real = greed
Fake necklace = Mathilde’s desire to be something she is not