The Diamond Necklace - Essay Example

Quyen Le number] The Diamond Necklace Maupassant’s short story d, The Diamond Necklace is quite interesting if we take Mathilde’s position. Considering what she had gone through, it is easy to put oneself in her position since we all have lost or misplaced something valuable at one point in time or another. However, losing something valuable which belonged to someone else is a considerably different matter. Mathilde Loisel did exactly that and lost a diamond necklace which belonged to her friend i.e. Madame Forestier.

Mathilde suffered a lot to replace the necklace but the final twist at the end of the story made her troubles in vain. There is no discernable reason for why the necklace was lost. Of course the loss itself can be attributed to the displaced mind of Mathilde as she was dancing in the ball or even the manner in which she decided to find a cab in the cold but in essence, it seems that she was simply fated to lose it. Her dreams of being the darling of the ball certainly came true but it must be noted that in the story itself the men around her seem to be greatly enamored by her charm and beauty rather than the diamonds on her neck.

Of course, she might have owed a great deal of her confidence to the diamonds she was wearing but she didn’t notice that she had lost them till she had come back home from the ball.This loss and the drama which unfolded afterwards could have been entirely different had she not focused no appearing to be beautiful and had let her natural charms shine through. However, her thinking that she was inferior to others simply because she did not have their trappings and accessories only led to misery towards her.

Further, her decision to lie to her friend and seek to replace the necklace might have gone differently had she confessed to her friend and found out the truth about the diamonds earlier rather than replacing a fake set of diamonds with a real one by taking loans she and her husband had to work for years to repay. Placed in the same situation, I would have certainly gone and confessed to the friend. At worst, I would have still gone through and begged or borrowed to recover the loss for my friend but in that case I would at least have a chance of knowing that the set was a fake one.

Further, this confession and the immense guilt which Mathilde had shown at the loss might have made the friend forgive and forget about the necklace if she were a kind soul. Another thing which she could have done, if Mathilde was not too worried about the ethics of the matter, is that she could have replaced the set with a fake set of diamonds. Of course, that is one course of action I might not take in reality. In conclusion, the story has quite an impact and makes a person wonder about the reality of riches and what is true and false.

In terms of experiencing the story, I feel that watching fiction and drama have a much greater impact in terms of the level of interactivity one can have rather than simply reading the story or listening to it. Despite the fact that vision is then limited by the way the scenes are directed and how they may be acted out, I feel that the three dimensional approach of seeing a story come to life remains the best option. Word Count: 588Works CitedMaupassant, Guy. The Diamond Necklace