Diamond Necklace From Her Friend example essay topic

To begin with does anyone really like to write essays on literary elements? When reading a story, recognizing the literary elements can be very interesting. There are seven main literary elements, including; plot, setting, characters, symbolism, setting, point of view, irony, and theme. In "The Necklace" Irony, Theme, and Symbolism are the key literary elements. First the most important literary element in, "The Necklace", is irony.

Irony is the most important literary element because in the story a lady named Mathilde Lois el thinks she is extremely poor and thinks that she is should have anything that she wants. In reality she has a fair amount of money and lives in a good apartment type home. Mathilde was invited to a party and did not want to go simply because she did not have a new dress, or any jewelry. Her husband bought her a new dress with the money he was going to use to buy a rifle, but now she did not have any jewelry.

Mathilde went to her friend and asked if she could borrow something to wear to the party. Mathilde picked a diamond necklace, "All at once, in a box lined with black satin, she came upon a superb diamond necklace, and her heart started beating with overwhelming desire" (Maupassant 538). When she went to the party she was the most popular person there and she thought it was all due to the necklace. When she got home she could not find the necklace, so she and her husband searched and searched. They came up empty handed, so Mathilde decided that they must replace it. Mathilde and her husband had to go to loan charts and had to ask their friends for money in order to replace the necklace.

One day, ten years later when all of the debt had been paid off, Mathilde ran into her friend whom had lent her the necklace. Mathilde told her the whole story about replacing the necklace and giving her a necklace that did not belong to her, and how for the last ten years they had been paying off their debt. Mathilde's friend simply laughed and said, "Mine was false" (Maupassant 541). This irony is situational because the ending is the complete opposite of what was thought to have happened.

Second theme is also a very important literary element in, "The Necklace". The theme in the story is, "The truth is always better than a lie". The truth is always better than a lie because usually when you do not tell the truth you could be missing out on a very important piece of information. Like in, "The Necklace", when Mathilde did not tell her friend that she lost the necklace, and then replaced it with an identical necklace. This action made Mathilde lose ten years of her life, repaying friends and loan charts, "Her husband worked in the evenings, putting a shopkeeper's ledgers in order, and often at night as well, doing copying at twenty-five centimeters a page. And it went on like that for ten years" (Maupassant 540).

If Mathilde had admitted to her friend that she had lost the necklace she could have given her friend the cheap price for her fake jewelry. "Your possessions do not represent you", could also be the theme because when Mathilde was at the party she felt that the necklace made all of the people notice her, when it was really just her. At the party all of the men wanted to dance with Mathilde, "She dance enraptured-carried away, intoxicated with pleasure, forgetting everything in this triumph of her beauty and the glory of her success" (Maupassant 538). Third symbolism is also a big literary element in Guy de Maupassant's "The Necklace".

In the story Mathilde borrows a diamond necklace from her friend to wear to a party. At the party she is by far the most popular person there, "All of the men looked at her, asked who she was, tried to get themselves introduced to her. All of the minister's aides wanted to waltz with her. The minister himself noticed her" (Maupassant 538). Through all of this Mathilde thought everyone was noticing her because she was wearing a diamond necklace. The necklace represents everything that Mathilde wants in her life, it represents wealth, power, and popularity.

She was not very wealthy, but had a respectable home and possessions, but she wanted more. She could not stand not being able to afford jewelry, "She suffered constantly, feeling that all of the attributes of a gracious life, every luxury, should rightly have been hers" (Maupassant 536). Last irony, theme, and symbolism are all very important elements in Guy de Maupassant's "The Necklace". The irony in the story is situational because what happened is the opposite of what was most likely thought to have happened. Theme is the second element introduced, there were two themes described for "The Necklace". The diamond necklace subject of the symbolism because it had a deeper meaning then what was said in the story.