In Mauassant’s essay, The Necklace Matilda Loisel borrowed a necklace from a rich friend, Mrs Forestier, so that she would not present a “shabby air in the midst of rich women.” She loses the necklace but refuses to admit that. Her and her husband, not realizing that the necklace was fake, buy a similar necklace to return to Mrs Forestier. They end up having to work for ten years to pay off this debt. All of Mme. Loisel’s actions leading up to the loss of the necklace were directed by an attempt to maintain her false sense of pride, for which she gave up her dignity over the next ten years.
Mme Loisel’s thoughts and actions were conditionsed by her vain character. As Maupassant says, she “felt that she was made for” frocks, jewels, elegant dinners, and admirers. Since she and her husband were poor, she would weep for days “from chagrin, form regret, from despair adn disappointment.” When her and her husband wer invited to a fancy ball, she couldn’t stand the thought of looking simple. She would be ashamed if she couldn’t at least look equal to the other women at the ball.
True pride comes from self respect or satisfaction in achievement. Mme Loisel’s only pride came from her physical appearance. She also had always wanted to gain pride through having material possesions. Her sense of self-importance at the ball was essentially claimed without right since it stemmed only from her outfit. This feeling lasted for one night, but the consequences of that evening continued for ten years.
Because of her false pride, Mme. Loisel did not think of different avenues to solve her problem and did not weigh the effects of her decision. The most obvious alternative would have been to be honest with Mrs Forestier. Even if the necklace were real, I doubt that she would have asked the Loisel’s, who were poor, to replace such an expensive item. Instead, as always, Mme Loisel tried to maintain this false pride. The Loisel’s had a hard time giving up only 400 francs for dress she had worn at the ball. They didn’t go out and buy a necklace in the first place because they couldn’t afford it, so I don’t see any justification in going out to buy a replacement necklace for the lost one.
Free Essays – The Second Coming
The Second Coming
The Second Coming reminds me of the Marabar Caves in A Passage to India because of the “disconnectedness” that is portrayed. The poem quickly begins: “Turning and turning in the widening gyre [cycle of history] The falcon cannot hear the falconer’; Here Yeats reminds us all about the cycle of life that is constantly in rebirth. Everything is constantly “turning” in a “widening gyre” and yet the “falcon cannot hear the falconer” Life is connected in the sense that it is constantly in motion, constantly “turning” and yet there exists this strange “disconnectedness” because nature “the falcon” is so far separated from mankind “the falconer” that it can no longer be called. I may be reading too much into this small passage but it really reminds me of Forster’s Marabar Caves: “A tunnel eight feet long, five feet high, three feet wide, leads to a circular chamber about twenty feet in diameter. The arrangement occurs again and again throughout the group of hills, and this is all, this is a Marabar Cave. . . They are dark caves. . . there is little to see, and no eye to see it,” (137) It doesn’t matter how deep you get into the caves, it doesn’t matter how many turns you follow because you end up in a cave that looks exactly like the one in the beginning. Even language cannot be understood well, everything amounted to “Boam.” Nature changed the very language of mankind to “boam.” Is Forster’s caves a symbol of life as he saw it ? “Circular chambers” that “occur again and again.” I may be totally wrong but the Caves remind me of the first two lines of The Second Coming.
Yeats cry continues with: “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,” The world is in disarray, nature has been separated from mankind due to the Industrial revolution and philosophical thought. Locke has shown us all that metaphysical entities, like nature, don’t exist because it’s not physical and thus able to be tested by scientific methods. At least in the Romantic era, mankind was connected with nature. In Wordsworth, Blake, and Keats we find a special connection with nature that is lost in Yeats. The Romantics understood the connection mankind has with nature and tried to amplify it with their prose and poetry.