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The Jewelry, By Guy De Maupassant And O ' Connor

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When contemplating whether a work of literature is worth reading, most readers look at the back cover of the book to read a short summary. Some critics look for tone and interesting plot twists, but the common reader looks for a purpose or lesson. Sure, powerful words and phrases contribute, but without the anticipation that one will gain knowledge from the story, it will be put right back on the bookshelf. Long novels with a back cover have hundreds of pages to reveal themes. However, short stories do not have nearly as much time to display a theme. In Guy de Maupassant’s The Jewelry, the main character, Lantin sees and experiences change through his life after his wife passes away. In Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man is Hard to find, the grandmother’s actions cost an entire family’s life. Both stories contains a similar theme but in different ways. Despite their short time frames, Maupassant and O’Connor both reveal a similar didactic medium- nobody is perfect. Maupassant’s short story begins with a description of a young girl who represents the perfect woman. Her gentle nature and manners attracted all of the men in the story. However, in The Jewelry , he states that “...she got into the habit of suspending in her pretty ears two big cut pebbles, fashioned in imitation of diamonds... ” (Maupassant 52). When first reading this, one would not find these as faults but instead assume that the woman is down to earth for taking such pride in false jewelry. However, when she
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