Comparing Maupassants Necklace and Chekovs Vanka Essay -- Comparison

Narrators and Sympathy in Maupassants Necklace and Chekovs Vanka In Guy de The Necklace and Anton Chekovs Vanka, the bank clerks attitudes are shut toward the protagonists Mathilde and Vanka. However, where the narrator of The Necklace feels outright hostility toward Mathilde, the narrator of Vanka voices his opinion more passively by pointing out the flaws in Vankas wishful thinking. In The Necklace, the narrators unsympathetic feelings toward Mathilde are made evident in the first paragraph when he states, she had no dowry, no expectations, no means of being known, understood, loved, wedded by an bounteous and distinguished man and she let herself be married to a light clerk at the Ministry of Public Instruction (66). The narrator portrays Mathilde as a selfish and haughty shrew whose only desire is to be look up to and praised by everyone else. Mathilde defines her status by her good looks and thinks it degrading that she is the daughter of a lowly clerk. Also, the phrase let herself be married shows that she consider herself supra the common person, and by marrying a clerk she lowered her standards (66). Conversely, in Vanka, the narrator points out the flaws of Vankas wishful thinking by showing the reality of his situation. Vanka writes to his granddaddy as if to Santa Clause, but instead of asking for toys, he asks for freedom from his barbarous life by asking his grandfather to take him away from here, abode to the village (48). The narrator, though, shows how Vankas grandfather drinks profusely although Vanka never truly realizes it except when he pictures him as a lively little old man of sixty-five with an everlastingly laughing face and drunken eyes (47). The narrator that p... ... (47) and in Vankas dream he appears to laugh, as if reveling in the fact that he has been able to cause more mischief, this time in Vankas life (49). both The Necklace and Vanka portray characters that are treated unsympathetically by their narrators. At the destroy of both stories, too, the narrators appear to laugh at the characters because all of their hard hightail it and troubles were for nothing Mathilde lost her youth and beauty for a fake necklace Vanka faineant his hopes on a letter that will never arrive at its destination. Works Cited Chekov, Anton. Vanka. sense Fiction. 3rd ed. Eds. Clanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren. Englewood Cliffs, NJ Prentice Hill, 1979. 46-49de Maupassant, Guy. The Necklace. Understanding Fiction. 3rd ed. Eds. Clanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren. Englewood Cliffs, NJ Prentice Hill, 1979. 66-72