English Literature - Outline - Essay Example

At the same time, we must mention that the stories are told from the first person’s perspective and this allows us to get a very clear insight into the inner feelings, thoughts and aspirations of the characters. It is true to say that the main two characters; Walter Mitty and Madame Loisel both had reached a point in their respective life where they knew inwardly that it was impossible for them to ever achieve their secret yearnings. It is a bit of a sad story in The Necklace (guy de Mauppassant) as the main characters secret desires ends up costing her and her hapless husband the next ten years and their financial wellbeing. Mr. Mitty on the other hand may not end up as tragically but he similarly is not happy with how other people perceive him and keeps dreaming up ways things could have been different.

The content in the secret life of Mr. Mitty is quite different from that in the necklace (guy de Mauppassant). This is evidenced in the fact that in the former, the writer concentrated on developing several well explained different scenarios that help develop the full story in relation to the real life of the main character. In the latter however, the writer develops the story, its themes and other aspects through a single string developing in the story. The story starts and ends through the same cause and effect chain unlike the other story where the content of the story is varied but comes around to develop the same storyline.

The two stories have very different settings with Mr. Mitty set in the pre-second world war America while The Necklace (guy de Mauppassant) is set in France. The story of Walter Mitty has one main set (in a town setting) which we know to be the real one and a myriad of others which occur in his daydreams (in a hydro plane, in an operating theater, in a court room and even in the line of fire in a firing squad. The two settings also create different paces for the two stories. To start with the secret life of Walter Mitty is set in a tranquil slow paced town setting with the characters being old and as such without much to do and the tempo only increases in the day dreams.

In The Necklace(guy de Mauppassant), the setting is a bit more frenetic with the characters younger and in the process of eking out a living(for the husband) and the wife going about her daily chores albeit with great longings and regret for what she will never have. Irony is abundant in this story as well; it is evident when Mr.Loisel tries to get his wife a ticket to attend a high society event. He gets her the invitation expecting to please her but ends up making her cry. When he tries to cheer her up further by buying her an expensive dress, she takes all the money he had saved and as if that’s not enough, they pay for the next ten years for the lost diamond necklace.

In the secret life of Walter Mitty, the main character has a very glamorous existence with a lot of adventure and respect bordering on reverence only irony is that this is just in his daydreams. In real life he is a very dull old man who does not command any respect and is actually under the control of his domineering wife. This is the irony especially in the first daydream where the reader is thrown into a tense encounter right off the bat and just as the reader is settling into the high paced drama, we are brought back to reality in an anti climax we cannot ignore.

The two stories utilize tone to