Don't Judge a Book by Its Cover A common problem that people often face in life is when they have to encounter people that don't show their true selves. In the text "The Necklace" by Guy de Maupassant, the author portrays the theme "Things are not always what they appear." The author shows this by including important elements of the plot such as an inciting incident and the resolution. To begin, the author of "The Necklace" starts to develop the theme with the use of an inciting incident. For example, the lines, "We must see about replacing the diamonds"(Paragraph 79) and "Madame Loisel came to know the ghastly life of poverty" (Paragraph 90), are examples of how he starts the inciting incident which helps develop the theme. In the text, Mathilde is first seen as a self-obsessed lady that just wants to be wealthy, but then she has to replace a necklace that she has lost, and that costs her a great deal of time, work, and money which starts to change the story and the character itself. This shows that the author is starting to develop the theme of "Things are not always what they appear" by starting with her having to change her ways. Without this, the theme would change as well as the whole plot due to the lack of an important start to the story. It is important to know that this …show more content…
In the resolution, Mathilde finds out that the necklace that she lost didn't cost as much as she paid for the replacement. In the text Mathilde says to Madame Forestier "I bought you another one just like it. And for the last ten years we have been paying for it" (paragraph 113). Madame Forestier later says "...Mine was an imitation. It was worth at the very most five hundred francs" (Paragraph 119) This shows that the theme of the story is that things aren't always what they seem to be. Mathilde paid thirty-six thousand francs for the replacement and in the end it ended up costing much more than it was actually