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Analysis Of The Book ' The Necklace '

Decent Essays

Pride and selfishness are intense and insatiable desires that can never be fulfilled. These unquenchable needs can be demonstrated by the main characters in the short stories “The Necklace”, which exemplifies the destructiveness of pride and selfishness from a woman that feels entitled and desires what’s beyond her means and the grandmother in “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” that puts her needs before others at all costs. Although these two stories are completely different in ways that “The Necklace is written in an earlier time in Paris about a young couples difference in frugalness and “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” is written in a later date in the state of Georgia about a grandmother and her burden on her family, the two main characters share similar traits such as selfishness and pride. The grandmother in “A Good Man Is Hard To Find” remains nameless and is portrayed as a very old-fashioned, self-righteous woman that is, “Seizing every chance” (O’Connor 1) to manipulate those around her for her own selfish reasons. She lives with her only son and his family in a southern setting in Georgia. She has an immense amount of pride and considers herself morally superior to others. The grandmother views herself as a “Lady” which is how she manipulates her family to satisfy her own selfishness. However, her idea of being a “lady” is a very skewed image in the way that morally and consciously, she is quite the opposite. She feels that because she is a “Lady”, she has the authority

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