How Does Guy De Maupassant Use Situational Irony In The Necklace

In Guy de Maupassant’s short story “The Necklace”, the reader sees a story of a women who learned a valuable life lesson about honesty. Isaac Asimov’s “The Machine that Won the War”, is about scientists who build a complex machine who come to realize that it wasn’t worth it in the end. In both readings, one can see that the theme emerges through both of the authors use of irony. For those who don’t know, irony is an action or situation which results in the opposite of what one would expect. In “The Necklace”, Guy de Maupassant uses situational irony to display the theme that honesty is the best policy. A very similar thing happens in “The Machine…”; where Isaac Asimov uses situational irony to say that the simpler thing in life are sometimes

After borrowing a necklace to go to a fancy party, Madam Loisel loses her friend necklace. She and her husband talk about what they should do; to buy time so they can search, he says, ‘“You must write to your friend,’ he said, ‘tell her you have broken the clasp of her necklace and that you are having it mended”’ (Maupassant 10). In “The Machine…”, the executive reacts to what the scientist confesses to him. In reply he says, ‘“Such revelations. It turns out that the material handed me to guide me in my decision-making capacity was a man-made interpretation of man-made data. Isn’t that right?”’ (Asimov 3) Back in “The Necklace”, Madame Loisel’s husband tells her to lie to her friend about what happened to the diamond necklace. The reason they did this was to cover up that fact that they had lost the necklace. If they had just been upfront and honest to begin with, her friend might not have even been that mad. But since they covered it up, the situation got much worse than it would’ve been if they told the truth. Meanwhile, in “The Machine…” the theme still doesn’t fully emerge. Instead, all that can be seen is a man confessing that he falsified the data. So instead of saying that simple things are better, it instead seems to go better with the theme for “The Necklace” which is honesty is the best policy. Overall, in the middle of each

In “The Necklace” Madame Loisel and her husband work very hard to pay everyone they borrowed money from back, after doing so she runs into her friend and says, ‘“I brought you back another exactly like it. And it has taken us ten years to pay for it… Mine was and imitation! It was worth five hundred francs at most!”’ (Maupassant 14). In “The Machine…” the executive tells the scientist that he really didn’t use the advice that the machine gave. Instead, he says, “A machine did win the war, John; at least a very simple computing device did; one that I used every time I had a particularly hard decision to make” (Asimov 4). C. At the end of “The Necklace”, Madame Loisel runs into her friend that she gave a 36,000-franc necklace to replace the one that she lost. Madame Loisel goes to tell her the story of what happened and how hard she worked to replace it only to be told by her friend that the one she lost was only worth 500-francs. Again, we see that if she had been honest, she wouldn’t have had to do everything that she did. Along with that, more readers can connect to this better because many people have put in a lot of effort on something; only to find out that it was unnecessary. But, in “The Machine…” it ends with the theme finally emerging, because the executive tells the Multivac scientists that