Irony in de Maupassant and Poe

Paper Summary:

The paper examines the Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" and Guy de Maupassant's "The Necklace" and highlights how these two stories effectively use irony to engage the reader's interest in an otherwise unlikeable protagonist. The paper contrasts these stories to "A Piece of String" which uses irony to generate interest in a dull, honest, but otherwise unremarkable protagonist. The paper shows how in all three works, irony drives the plot and sharpens the reader's interest in the story and its central, symbolic, title element.

From the Paper:

"One of the most notable features of both "The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allen Poe and "The Necklace" by Guy de Maupassant is the ways these two short stories effectively use irony to engage the reader's interest in an otherwise unlikeable protagonist, while "A Piece of String" uses irony to generate interest in a dull, honest, but otherwise unremarkable protagonist (thesis statement). The narrator of Poe's story is a murderer, a paranoid and mentally unstable individual who kills an old man merely because he dislikes the way the old man looks at him. The more the unnamed narrator insists that he is sane, the more the reader, along with everyone else around the man, is certain that the narrator is insane. The tension between the narrator's self-perception and the way the narrator is perceived by other characters propels the plot forward almost as much as the question of if and when his crime will be revealed to the world."

Sample of Sources Used:

• de Maupassant, Guy. "The Necklace." Classic Short Stories. 28 Jun 2008.http://www.classicshorts.com/stories/necklace.html
• de Maupassant, Guy. "A Piece of String." Classic Short Stories. 28 Jun 2008.http://www.classicshorts.com/stories/string.html
• Poe, Edgar Allen. "The Tell-Tale Heart." The Online Literature Library. Literature.org.28 Jun 2008.http://www.literature.org/authors/poe-edgar-allan/tell-tale-heart.html

More papers on Irony in de Maupassant and Poe:

• Book Review # 73872 : "Materialism in de Maupassant's "The Necklace"
• Analytical Essay # 116481 : "Irony in 'Fat Girl' and 'Soldiers Home'"
• Analytical Essay # 122721 : "Irony in "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight"

APA Citation:

MLA Citation: