Theme Of Irony In The Necklace By Guy De Maupassant

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“The Necklace”, by Guy de Maupassant is an excellent story of unhappiness. The story is mainly about a woman, named Mathilide, who wanted expensive things that she knew she couldn’t have because she could not afford them. She was then invited to a ball, so then she insisted she had to buy a “proper” dress. Then she also needed to have a necklace to go with her new dress, so she went to a friend to borrow one. She borrowed this expensive diamond necklace and went to the ball, but then she realizes she lost it. Then she had to buy a new one making them poor and in a lot of debt. Until years later she finally finds out the necklace she borrowed was fake, and that they bought this weird one for no reason at all. If she had never been discontent …show more content…
One example of this would be when Mathilide said” I-I-I have not Mme. Forester’s diamond necklace.” (pg.). This is a great example due to the fact that it is situational irony and also how she lost the necklace. This was again very ironic because of the fact that she insisted she had to borrow this really expensive necklace to go to the ball, when in the end she ends up losing it. Another example in the story that showed was how the necklace was fake and worth absolutely nothing(pg.179) quote that really stuck out to me was when Madame Forestier said “Oh my poor Mathilde! But mine was a fake. It wasn’t worth more than five hundered francs.” (pg.179). Due to this fact she and her husband went into debt for basically no reasoning at all. So the consequences here was now Madame forester has a real necklace, and once again what does Mathilde have absolutely nothing. So overall the irony here is that they bought this necklace not knowing the first one was actually fake. These two quotes or situations still support Mathilde problems with being discontent with her life as it …show more content…
He used three effective literary elements. He used conflict to support the plot, and situational irony to make the plot twist this gave the story dynamics, lastly he used point of view to tie everything together for the theme otherwise we would have never known the information we do. He needed these elements to make a backbone to the story which was theme. There were a lot of other literary elements used throughout the story, but these three really stood out. Guy de Maupassant used situational irony, conflict and, point of view to represent the theme of

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