Throughout the story “A Piece of String” by Guy de Maupassant, Hauchecome works tirelessly, but is still not able to convince people he is innocent of a crime. In the story, Hauchecome picks up a piece of string off the ground, thinking it could be of some worth. While doing so, he is spotted by his enemy, Maitre Malandain, who reports him for stealing a missing pocketbook. Later, the pocketbook is returned, but the townspeople still believe Hauchecome is guilty. They believe that he is at least an accomplice in the crime, if not directly tied to it. Also, they do not believe his excuse of picking up a piece of string on the ground seriously, and think that it is just a bad cover up story. Hauchecome is not able to convince people that he is innocent of a crime because they believe that he has a part to …show more content…
As Hauchecome is in the Mayor’s office, he pleads that he picked up a piece of string, not a pocketbook. He claims to have done this because he is poor, and thought it could be of some worth to him. The townspeople hear of this, and see it as a bad excuse to try to cover up his crime. One townsman talking to Hauchecome says “Come, come, old sharper, that's an old trick; I know all about you piece of string” (Maupassant, 138). The quote shows that the townsman believes that Hauchecome had to come up with an excuse for picking something off the ground, and mocks him by recalling Hauchecome’s piece of string story. The townsman views the story as a joke, and thinks that there is no way Hauchecome would bend over just to pick up a piece of string that has next to no worth. On the other hand, Hauchecome tries to argue that he is poor, and the string could be of some worth to him. However, they infer that since Hauchecome is poor, he likely would do anything for extra money, and would not care about some piece of