Name   : Ali Fahmi H

NIM     : A1D2 13 002

Class    : B

Analysis The Necklace Story

SHORT STORY ELEMENTS

A. CHARACTERS

There are three main characters in this short story:

1.   Mathilde Loisel, the wife.

2.   The little clerk of the Ministry of Public Instruction, the husband

3.   Madame Forestier, the friend who lent Mathilde a diamond necklace

B. CHARACTERIZATION

1. Madame Loisel

·         She is unhappy with her life

·         She’s Poor & utterly wants to be rich

·         The woman is pretty and charming and warries below her

·         Dymnamic-She changes throughout the story; at first she is very selfish and towards the end she works hard and accepts her life

·         Round- She showed a variety of feelingzs and emotions. At times she was upset, and at other times she was happy.throughout the story she also showed signs of jealousy.

To make it clear, Beautiful Mathilde Loisel was born into a family of clerks, and her utter conviction that her station in life is a mistake of destiny leads her to live her life in a constant rebellion against her circumstances. Although she has a comfortable home and loving husband, she is so unsatisfied that she is virtually oblivious of everything but the wealth she does not have. Her desire for wealth is a constant pain and turmoil. She cannot visit her wealthy friend Madame Forestier without being overcome with jealousy, and the idea of going to a party without expensive clothes drives her to tears. Mathilde is a raging, jealous woman who will do anything in her power to reverse the “mistake of destiny” that has plunged her into what she perceives as a wholly inappropriate and inadequate life.

2. Monsieur Loisel

·         He has very Low Standards.

·         A caring husband

·         He is willing to do anything for his wife.

·         He works hard.

·         Dynamic- He shoe=ws different feelings and emotions during the story. He showed signs of excitement and also concern.

·         Kind, generous Practical, Loyal, ,unselfish, patient, loving, want to please his wife

·         A Clerk for Minister of Education : Middle Class

·         Married to Mathilde

·         Static- He doesn’t change during the story.

To make it clear, Mathilde’s husband. Monsieur Loisel is content with the small pleasures of his life but does his best to appease Mathilde’s demands and assuage her complaints. He loves Mathilde immensely but does not truly understand her, and he seems to underestimate the depth of her unhappiness. When Mathilde loses the necklace, Monsieur Loisel sacrifices his own future to help her repay the debt. He pays dearly for something he had never wanted in the first place.

3. Madame Forestier

·         Wealthy, Generous, kind, and Trusting

·         She is a friend of Madame Loisel.

·         She is a very wealthy and rich woman.

·         Madame Foresteier does not appear very often in the story.

·         Flat-we only seem ton see one trait because she appears rarely.

·         Static- Her Values and options never change during the story.

To make it clear, Mathilde’s wealthy friend. Madame Forestier treats Mathilde kindly, but Mathilde is bitterly jealous of Madame Forestier’s wealth, and the kindness pains her. Madame Forestier lends Mathilde the necklace for the party and does not inspect it when Mathilde returns it. She is horrified to realize that Mathilde has wasted her life trying to pay for a replacement necklace, when the original necklace had actually been worth nothing.

B. PLOT

a)  Inciting incident

At the beginning of the story, essentially nothing happens. The narrator's interested in telling us about Mathilde (even though we don't yet know her name). We learn about her back-story, her character, and her unhappiness with her mediocre life. This represents a classic initial situation.Mathilde, the main woman character in this short story, is being described as unhappy because of her and her husband’s being poor.

b)  Development

The complication starts when she and her husband are invited to a rich people’s ball. She buys a new gown, and to go with it, she borrows an elegant diamond necklace from her friend Madame Forestier. Mathilde refuses to attend the party without a suitable dress/loisel gives money/doesn’t have jewellery/ borrows a necklace/ loses it/ borrows money to buy a new one/ lives in poverty to pay a debt. So, Mathilde solves the first problem when her husband gives her money for a dress. But then she runs into a second problem: she's needs to have some jewels. Luckily, her friend Mme. Forestier is able to provide her with a fabulous diamond necklace. But now Mathilde's been entrusted with something expensive that belongs to someone else and we have the potential for disaster. It's true that the complication is often when things "get worse," and that doesn't really happen here (for that, we have to wait for the climax). In fact, after borrowing the necklace, Mathilde has the time of her life. But it's when she borrows the necklace that the possibility opens up for something really bad to happen…and it does.

c)  Climax

The peak of this short story is when Mathilde discovers that she lost the diamond necklace. After the loss of the necklace, we're kept in constant suspense. First, there's the search for the necklace: will it be found? When it becomes clear it isn't going to be, the question becomes: what will the Loisels do? Will they find a replacement? And when they do, the question is: how the are they going to pay for it? It turns out paying for it takes quite a toll on them – their lives are ruined for ten years10 years later relieved of the debt Mme. L. confesses all to Mme. Forestier who reveals that the necklace is fake.

d) Falling action

When Mathilde meets Mme. Forestier on the Champs Elysées, it looks like we're just about to tie up the last loose end in the story. The main action is over – the Loisels have finally finished paying off their debts for the necklace. All that remains is for Mathilde to see whether her friend ever noticed the substitute necklace, and tell her the sad story of the whole affair. But then things don't quite wrap up the way we expect. In replacing the lost diamond necklace, Mathilde and her husband buy another one exactly the same, for thirty-four thousand francs, from its original price of forty francs, such a very big amount of money for the couple. The eighteen thousand francs was inherited by her husband from his father, and the rest of the amount he borrows from various sources.

e)      Resolution

The problem resolves itself, though in a negative manner, when Mathilde and Madame Forestier meet again after ten years, and the latter tells the former that the diamond necklace she borrowed was fake.

C. CONFLICT

A conflict is, simply put, a struggle between opposing forces.  Conflicts can internal or external.  An internal conflict is between a character and his or her self, and usually involves a tough decision or fearThe conflict here are of Man vs. Himself, and Man vs. Society—Mathilde has been struggling as a poor woman because of her desire to “fit in” the society. –ARV.

Internal

Mme. Loisel vs. herself : her excessive pride, materialism and shallowness cause her emotional suffering as she feels she’s been deprived of luxuries.

External

Mme. Loisel vs M. Loisel’s different values (although he is tolerant of her behavior and wants to please her)

D. SETTING

a)  place : in Paris

b)  time :sometime in the 18th century.

c)  weather conditions : good

d)  social conditions :  Mathilde Loisel and her husband were poor

e)  mood or atmosphere : Mathilde is not contented of her poor life. When she loses the borrowed diamond necklace, she and her husband become anxious. Then they buy a new one to replace the lost one, and they live a stressful life in order to pay their debts  incurred to buy such necklace.

f) Time Span : 10 years

D. POINT OF VIEW

The Point of View used in this short story is the Omniscient Limited - The author tells the story in third person (using pronouns they, she, he, it, etc).  We know only what the character knows and what the author allows him/her to tell us. We can see the thoughts and feelings of characters if the author chooses to reveal them to us.

If a first person is used, the effect might be different, especially if the narrator is Mms. Loisel. Author Guy de Maupassant is the narrator of the story, and he uses Mathilde's point of view, while not using Mathilde herself, to tell her story from her perspective.

This type of narrative is, therefore, third person omniscient objective. This is a narrator who knows everything that is going on in the story, even the innermost feelings of the characters. This narrator does not take sides, either, and just comments based on the facts.

E. GENRE

Maupassant was a student of the great French author Flaubert, who was a founding figure of "Realism" (with a capital "R") as a literary genre. Realism meant more than just writing about real-seeming situations in a realistic way. More specifically, it often meant writing about "average" people – not super-rich, or famous, or holy, or good, or even happy people. Not terribly exciting people either. Usually the "average" person meant a middle-class person, and particularly the bored, unhappy middle-class person who longs to live the more exciting life of the rich and famous. Sound familiar? We might think of Flaubert's classic Realist character Madame Bovary as an inspiration for Mathilde.

It also seems fair to call "The Necklace" literary fiction. Maupassant was a big-time innovator of the short story as a genre of literature. Maupassant is known particularly for his unique talent for creating compact plots, and this story is one of his finest productions. Not only that, he practically invented the twist ending – and there's almost no twist ending more famous than his one.

Finally, if we think "The Necklace" has a clear moral message (for example, "Be honest," or "Wealth is always false"), we might want to call the story a parable, which is a simple work meant to illustrate a "moral." Then again, we might not think the story has an obvious moral. We might even say that the uncertainty about whether it does means that it's not a parable, because the moral of a parable is supposed to be obvious. We'll leave that one up to us.

E. LITERARY DEVICES

In my opinion, the literary devices used in this story are Symbolism and Irony. For Symbolism, the borrowed necklace symbolizes being wealthy, which Mathilde has been longing to be. While wearing it, she feels so superior. Meanwhile, for Irony, such borrowed necklace looks so sophisticated but is actually fake (Situational Irony). Then, the loisels live on the “Street of the martyrs” and end up making a ten year- long sacrifice. (Verbal Irony).

F. THEME

The theme of “ The Necklace” is about defining our values. Madame Loisel values being rich and having possessions. Even though this story was written in the late 1800’s, we can still relate to the theme, and learn to choose the right values in our country. We can read "The Necklace" as a story about greed, but we can also read it as a story about pride. Mathilde Loisel is a proud woman. She feels far above the humble circumstances (and the husband) she's forced to live with by her common birth. In fact, her current situation disgusts her. She's a vain one too, completely caught up in her own beauty. It could be that it is also pride that prevents Mathilde and her husband from admitting they've lost an expensive necklace. After the loss of the necklace makes Mathilde poor, and her beauty fades, she may learn a pride of a different sort: pride in her own work and endurance

A Symbols in the story is the actual necklace. During the story, Madame Loisel thinks that the necklace she lost was real diamonds, but since she didn’t tell the truth from the beginning, she ended up out the necklace she borrowed wasn’t worth anywhere near the amount she payed to replace it.

UNIVERSITAS HALU OLEO