How Does Guy de Maupassant Capture the Reader's Sympathy in the Text

How does Guy de Maupassant capture the reader’s sympathy in the text?
The Necklace is a short story written in 1884 by a French author Guy de Maupassant. The story compares the class statuses of the rich and poor. Sympathy is created through the text, since the main character – Madame Matilde Loisel dreams of becoming a woman who is a part of the higher classed world. She lives in envy, jealousy, and depression. The author uses hyperbole, metaphor and repetition to show how much she wants to be wealthy and glamorous like the people who lives in the higher classed world. The writer also uses sematic field to emphasize her feelings, and leave the reader with a greater understanding of what the writer is trying to express. The moral in the story is to cherish and appreciate what you have, and don’t be so selfish. Also, don’t lie because things may turn out to be a lot worse.
The extract is written in third person so that the reader can visualize the story from the narrator’s point of view. It would create sympathy because it is how other people view her as a character, and it is also how we view her - a woman that only dreams about the rich world day and night. The writer does this so that he would give a broader view of the story. The author also chose to write in third person because it would not be bias to the characters.
The main device used to create sympathy - irony appears towards the end of the story where Mathilde found out that the necklace was not made out of real diamonds, and was worth a lot less than she had expected. This would allow the reader to feel pity for her because she worked ten years of labor just to pay off all the depts. They owed money from their friends, and the bank, so that they had enough money to purchase a necklace that looked identical to the one Mathilde lost. However, it is ironic because all she wanted was to be the prettiest and most elegant woman. She got what she wanted, but she lost the necklace and had to work for a long time to pay her back.
Short sentences are another device used to capture the reader’s sympathy. “They lived like this for ten years” The short, yet powerful sentence allows the reader to feel pity for Mathilde and her husband, since they had to live in such bad circumstances for ten years.
Juxtaposition is used to compare Mathilde and her husband in the text. This creates sympathy to Mathilde’s husband, since he tried to make her happy, however she was never satisfied. “Instead of being delighted as her husband had hoped, she tossed the invitation peevishly onto the table’”. Guy de Maupassant creates vice and virtue characters - Mathilde was very hard to satisfy, and yet her husband still tried to do everything he could to make happy. Mathilde’s husband was shown as a gentleman, since he worked so hard with Mathilde to pay for the necklace which was mostly Mathilde’s responsibility, whereas Mathilde was shown as a selfish wife who only cared about her appearance and how people view her. Mathilde was always so trapped in her thoughts of becoming rich, and glamorous that she had already forgotten that she has a husband that cares for her. Repetition and imagery is used in paragraphs three and four, where Mathilde fantasizes about her ideal life, a world she wishes she lived in. The writer describes her fantasy using figurative language. He uses long sentences to describe her imagination, each new statement starting with ‘she dreamed’. This repetition emphasizes on how it is all just a dream. It gives the reader a feeling of pity for the character because she does not own anything she described when she is very hard-working. Her fantasy gives her hopes to live in. This allows the reader to have an inner view of the character’s selfishness, and envy. However, it would allow the reader to feel pity for the character since she doesn’t have any comfort or luxury. It juxtaposes the rich and comfortable life she wants to live and the reality. Another example of repetition that was used was towards the end of the story, where Mathilde is hesitating on whether she should confess Jeanne about the truth; the truth that she lost the necklace. ‘Who could tell? Who could possibly tell?’, this rhetorical question allows the reader to think of their own opinion of what could have happened if she confessed. It also sets up an enigma about what would actually happen if she confessed? What would actually happen if she never lost the necklace? The author takes us through her everyday routine of her boring life to capture the reader’s sympathy. “She became used to heavy domestic work and all kinds of ghastly kitchen chores.” This creates sympathy, since not only is this not the life she dreamed about, but it is even worse than the life she had have before she lost the necklace. Hyperbole is used in the start of the text to exaggerate and show how much she hates her life. “Making a supreme effort, she controlled all her sorrows” – This shows that Mathilde is very unsatisfied with her life, and she was so depressed she had to use supreme effort to be able to hide this feeling. This allows the reader to feel pity for Mathilde because she cannot afford a dress to attend the party. Mathilde’s husband also feels as if he is a failure as he cannot even make his own wife happy and satisfied. “He was devastated”, this allows the reader to feel sympathy for the husband, since he worked so hard for the invitations, but Mathilde is portrayed as a selfish character, since she won’t attend this event just because she is unsatisfied with her own image. A sematic field is when a group of text is related to one subject/topic and it is used to capture the reader’s sympathy by exaggerating the situation. It can help the author express his feelings using a variety of adjectives or nouns. For example “she would weep tears of sorrow, regret, despair, and anguish”. This helps the reader feel pity for the character since the variety of words used is all gloomy. It would also allow the reader to have a greater understanding of the character’s feelings and emotions. Overall, I think that the author used great devices to allow the reader to feel sympathy for the characters in the novel. The examples of devices that are listed are the devices that I think are most effective for allowing the readers to feel sympathy for the characters. Although the story has made me feel sympathy for Mathilde, I think she deserved it since she did not confess to the owner of the necklace that she lost it. Also, her selfishness and jealousy made her life a lot more miserable.