The main character in the short story, The Jewels, follows the elements of naturalism very well. M. Lantin is displayed without sentimentalism and is followed from an almost scientific perspective. M. Lantin is also driven by greed.
M. Lantin is followed almost as if in a scientific experiment. Maupassant describes Lantin with very little emotion. Every now and then M. Lantin will smile, and he loves his wife very much, but Maupassant follows his life with very little emotional interest. Even when a large even in M. Lantin’s life occurred, Maupassant tells the reader in a very brief, uncaring manner: “M. Lantin, then chief book keeper to the Minister of the Interior, making thirty-five hundred francs a year, proposed to her and married her.”(Maupassant, 20)
Near the middle of the story, when M. Lantin’s wife dies, Guy de Maupassant writes only three paragraphs about Mme. Lantin’s death and M. Lantin’s grief. The description of Mme. Lantin’s death is very short and uncompassionate: “When she had been to the opera one evening in the winter, she returned home shivering with cold. The next day she began to cough. Eight days later she died from an inflammation of the lungs.” (Maupassant, 21)
After Mme. Lantin’s death, Maupassant describes the hardships the M. Lantin goes through: “But life was now hard for him. His salary, which in his wife’s hands, was sufficient for all the household needs, was now inadequate for him alone.” (Maupassant, 21) This description is very brief and very objective, displaying no emotion towards the hardship that M. Lantin would actually be going through. Descriptions like that can be found throughout the story.
The Term Paper on Drama Story Death Of A Salesman
Death of a Salesman is a play written by Arthur Miller. Basically, Miller was not a very prolific writer and Death of a Salesman had been his most famous work. At a certain point, this particular play could be regarded as a tragedy although not in the normal sense. What I mean when I said ‘tragedy though not in the normal sense” is that usually we associate tragedy from a person with a very high ...
Eventually, greed becomes a large factor in M. Lantin’s life. Once he discovers that his wife’s jewels are real, he quickly sells them and “inherits” almost two hundred thousand francs. However, when M. Lantin tells his employer he is no longer an employee, he states he has inherited three hundred thousand francs: “I come, sir, to give you my resignation. I have just inherited three hundred thousand francs.” (Maupassant, 25) The amount of money he inherited seemed to grow with everyone he met: “Finding himself near a distinguished-looking gentleman, he could not resist the itch to confide in him, with a certain coyness, that he had just inherited four hundred thousand francs.” (Maupassant, 25)
This story follows the characteristics of a naturalist story very well. It shows little emotional interest in the main character, it is very clear that M. Lantin is driven by greed and the end of the story is tragic.
