Exercises

Hello and salam to all students ! We hope the guidelines we have provided to you in previous posts have helped you in analyzing a short story. To test your understanding, we have prepared some exercises to see how far is your understanding in analyzing a short story. We have divided three different exercises for three different level of proficiency and feel free to complete all the exercises. All the best ! :)

Level : Beginners 

A. Rearrange the sentences below according to the sequence of events in the story.

• She borrowed a necklace from a friend. (   )
• She called her husband a 'little clerk'. (   )
• Loisel received an invitation to the ball. (   )
• She had become unattractive due to the difficult life. (   )
• Mathilde was unhappy with her life. (   )
• It took them ten years to pay back what they owed. (   )
• Feeling frightened, she realized the necklace was gone. (   )
• She felt outraged when she was told the the necklace was fake. (   )
• She believed she could have a better life. (   )
• They searched everywhere but could not find it. (   )
• She had a wonderful time at the ball. (   )
• The bought another one to replace it. (   )

B. The sentences below describe the setting of the story. Fill in the blanks with the locations given in the box.

1. Mathilde and loisel live in an apartment in ____________________.
2. They later changed their lodgings to a  ____________________ under the roof.
3. The Ministerial Ball is held at the  ____________________ on 18th January.
4. They walked towards the  ____________________ in the hope of finding a cab.
5. The ancient night cabs are so shabby that they are never seen around  ____________________ until after dark.
6. The found a cab on the  ____________________.
7. Loisel has planned to treat himself to a little shooting on the  ____________________ next summer with several friends
8. They found in a shop at the  ____________________, a string of diamonds that seemed to them exactly like the one they had lost.
9. One Sunday, Mathilde had a chance encounter with Madame Forestier when she went for a walk in the  ____________________ to refresh herself after the labours of the week.

Level : Intermediate 

A. Give your own opinions (agree or disagree) on each situations given below. Elaborate your answers.

1. Lying is acceptable in some situations. You should always lie to save face.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

     2. Life sometimes hands you cruel situations. The best thing to do when this happens is to keep your suffering to yourself and find a way to get by.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

    3. People with money and people without money should not socialize.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

    4. The only way to impress others is to spend extravagant amounts of money.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

    5. Money can buy happiness.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

B. Decide which adjectives best decribe Mathilde Loisel and Monsieur Loisel. The first example has been given.

i) She is ;

•  Demanding
•  
•  
•  
•  
• 
  

ii) He is ;

• Patient
•  
•  
•  
•  
• 
  

Level : Advanced 

A. Below are some of the words/phrases used by the writer to depict both wealth and poverty story. Arrange them in the correct categories.

          WEALTH                                                                      POVERTY
 
       ____________                                                                ____________
       ____________                                                                ____________
       ____________                                                                ____________
       ____________                                                                ____________
       ____________                                                                ____________


B. Using details from the story, do you agree or disagree with the following quote, "Honesty is the best policy" Write your opinion on the space provided for not more than 150 words.

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

We hope this exercises help ! Regards.

Moral Values

vii) MORAL VALUES

Moral values are the beliefs about what is important in life, to help them distinguish right and wrong. Moral values are subjective and refer to how one should act -- honest, altruistic, self-diciplined, while other values refer to what one wants to accomplish or obtain in life -- a lot of money, fame, a family, friendship. It is very specific; it is action guiding. It tells you what to do in a specific situation.


Examples ;

These are some of the moral values found in The Necklace :

• We should not judge people on appearance because they may appear to be rich and successful and they may not be. It also teaches us we should not pine after material possessions but realize we are lucky enough with what we have.
• We must be satisfied with whatever we have and what we are. We must always be honest enough to confess our mistakes instead of ignoring them.
• We should learn how to appreciate what we have before it becomes what we had. Mathilde lost her wealth because of her own silly mistake.

We hope this helps ! Regards.

Point Of View

vi) POINT OF VIEW (P.O.V)

Point of view is when the story is told from a consistent perspective, that perspective is called point of view. Narrative point of view derives its lexicon from the number and person of its pronouns: first person, second person, third person.

	1ST PERSON	2ND PERSON	3RD PERSON
SINGULAR	I, me, my, mine, myself	you; your; yours; yourself	he, she, it; his, her(s), its; him, her, it; himself, herself, itself
PLURAL	we, us, our, ours, ourselves	you; your; yours; yourselves	they; them; their(s); themselves

OMNISCIENCE 

A consistent point of view limits the range and amount of knowledge the narrator can invoke to tell the story. This is called omniscience. Depending on the narrator's relationship to the story and its characters, the degree of the narrator's intelligence may be classified as either omniscient, objectice, subjectice, or episodically limited.

	FIRST PERSON		THIRD PERSON
OMNISCIENT	The storyteller is, both, a central ego in the story and has godlike abilities to move in and out of time, place, and character consciousness.	The storyteller is a disconnected, disembodied voice--a floating consciousness that approximates the reader's own consciousness

Narrative Point of View	Advantages	Disadvantages
First Person	Eyewitness account, gives immediacy, realism to story Author can create dramatic irony Narrator can be unifying element	No direct interpretation by the author Bias or limited knowledge of narrator Danger that narrator may transcend his knowledge
Third Person Omniscient	God-like narrator gives thoughts of character, dimension to story Most flexible: author can control omniscience	Author can come between reader and story Shifting from character to character may destroy unity
Third Person Limited Omniscient	Realistic; we see world through one person Ready-made unifying element Useful characterization of point-of-view character	Limited field of observation Difficulty having character aware of all important events

Examples ; 

In The Necklace, the story is told in third-person omniscient because you know the thought and feelings of Madame Loisel and her husband. You see Madame Loisel's thoughts in the beginning of the story when she is fantasizing about what her life should be like. You also see Monsieur's thoughts after he heard how much the beautiful dress for the ball would cost, which is 400 francs. The narrator explains how pale he turns to.

We hope this helps ! Regards.

Themes

v) THEMES 

The theme of a short story is simply its meaning. It is the main idea explored in the story by the writer and the central principle around which the story and character revolves. Sometimes, a writer crafts a story with a central idea, in which the theme is easy to identify and understand -- such as love, hatred, death. The theme can often be understood in the plot of a story, through the characters of a story, by understanding the conflict. Longer short stories and novels will have multiple themes. 

Here are some guidelines to help you identify themes in short stories ;

1. Understand the main conflict of the short story.
2. Understand the epiphany. 
3. What does the story suggest about the human condition. The literature of short fiction includes several themes that are often repeated.
4. Look for key phrases or sentences. Sometimes the writer reveals the theme by repeating symbols or motifs.
5. Identify the big idea, what the story is about -- love, death, crime, abortion, lust, human, nature, marriage, and so forth.

Examples ;

The themes that can be found in The Necklace are ;

• Appearance and Reality

Maupassant demonstrates that Madame Loisel is beautiful but she isn't content. Mathilde has the apperance of beauty but not the reality of beauty.

• Suffering

Mathilde, the classic dissatisfies housewife, who spends her days weeping about how boring and shabby her life is. Her happiest night becomes her worst nightmare when she loses the diamond necklace she borrowed from her friend, Madame Forestier. She and husband experience different sort of suffering : the suffering of real poverty.

• Wealth

Mathilde is obsessed with wealth. She is so jealous of her friend's wealth, Madame Forestier. When Mathilde was given a chance to get decked out in diamonds and go to a ritzy part to mingle with all the beautiful people, but then she loses the diamond necklace she borrowed, casts into poverty and learns what it means to truly live without money.

We hope this helps ! Regards.

Character Analysis

iv) CHARACTER ANALYSIS

When you want to write a character analysis, you will be expected to describe a character's personality and role in the story. We get to know characters in our stories through the things they say, feel and do. It's not as difficult as it may seem to figure out a character's personality traits based on his/her thought and behaviours.

There are two types of character ;
i) Protagonist
The protagonist of a story is often called the main character. The plot revolves around the protagonist. There may be more than one main character.

ii) Antagonist
The antagonist is the character who represents a challenge or an obstacle to the protagonist in a story. In some stories, the antagonist is not even a person.

Here, we provided a video for you !

Examples ;

The characters in The Necklace are ;

• Mathilde Loisel - The protagonist of the story. Mathilde has been blessed with physical beauty but not with the affluent lifestyle she yearns for and she feels deeply discontented with her lot in life. She she prepares to attend a fancy party, she borrows a diamond necklace from her friend Madame Forestier, then loses it and had to work for 10 years to pay off a replacement.
• Madame Forestier - Mathilde's wealthy friend. Forestier treats Mathilde kindly but Mathilde is bitterly jealous of Forestier's wealth and the kindness pains her. Forestier lends Mathilde the necklace for the party and does not inspect it when Mathilde returns it. She horrified to realize that Mathilde wasted her life to replace the fake diamond necklace with an original ones.

Here are some other useful terms for character analysis :

• Flat Character : A flat character has one or two personality traits that don't change. The flat character can play a major or a minor role.
• Round Character : A round character has many complex traits and those traits develop and change in a story. It seems more real than a flat character because people are complex.
• Stock or Stereotype Character : A character who represents a stereotype is a stock character. These characters exist to maintain widespread belief in "types". such as hot-tempered redheads, stingy businessman and absent-minded professors.
• Static Character : A static character never changes. A loud, obnoxious character who remains the same throughout the story is static. A boring character who is never changed by events is also static.
• Dynamic Character : Unlike a static character, a dynamic character does change and grow as the story unfolds. Dynamic characters respond to events and experience a change in attitude or out look.

We hope this helps ! Regards.

Settings

iii) SETTINGS

Setting is comprised of the time and the location of the short story. In works of narrative (especially fictional), the literary element setting includes the historical moment in time and geographic location in which a story takes place, and helps initiate the main backdrop and mood for a story. Elements of setting may include culture, historical period, geography and hour. Along with the plot, character, theme and style, setting is considered one of the fundamental components of fiction.


As examples ;

In The Necklace, the setting takes place in Belle Epoque, Paris. The story is set in 1880s or so(19th Century) in the magical, glamorous city of lights, Paris, France. The events take place at 

i) Rue De Martyrs, where the Loisels live
ii) The Seine, where Mathilde waits for a cab
iii) The Palais Royal, where Mathilde buys a necklace to replace the lost one
iv) The Champ Elysees, the street where Mathilde meets Madame Forestier

Mathilde gives money, posh "comfort" and fancy, fashionable baubles makes her fit right in with the Paris of the late 19th century. That period was often called the "Belle Epoque" (which means Lovely Age or Grand Years). It was a time of peace and technological innovation. It was also a period of spectacular wealth, modish fashion and what you might call high consumerism.


We hope this helps ! Regards.

Plot

ii) PLOT OVERVIEW 

To write a plot overview, you need to read and understand the short story to be able to write a plot diagram. Here are some guidelines on how to write a plot overview ;

(click to view larger image)

1. Exposition : The beginning

Every story must have a beginning. The start, or exposition, is where the characters and setting are established. During this part of the novel, the conflict or main problem is also introduced.

    2. Rising Action : Introduction of the problem or conflict

After the characters and main problem have been established, the main problem or conflict is dealt with by some kind of action. In this part of the story, the main character is in crisis. This is the place for tension and excitement. The complication can arise through a character's conflict with society, nature, fate, or a number of themes. The main character is aware a conflict has arisen and takes some kind of step to battle this crisis.

   3. Climax : The high point 

The climax is the high point of the story. It is the main event or danger that the character faces. This is the darkest moment, the worst challenge the character must oppose. At this point it looks as if the character will fail, and will never get what he/she wants. The turning point may be either physical or emotional. In a romance, the girl may turn the hopeful lover down; in action story, the character may be surrounded by enemies with no enemies with no chance of escape.

   4. Falling Action : Winding down

Following the climax, the story begins to slowly wind down. Falling action, one of the two final story elements, shows the result of the actions or decisions the character has made. This eventually leads to the finals part of the novel, the crisis resolution.

   5. Resolution : The end

The resolution also often called denouement, which is French for "to untie" or "unraveling", is the conclusion of the story. Here, the conflicts are resolved, all loose ends are tied up and the story concludes with either a happy or sad ending.

As examples ;

The plot diagram from The Necklace is as follows :

• Exposition

"The Necklace" begins with a description of Madame Mathilde Loisel. Though she is pretty and charming, she and her husband, a clerk in the Ministry of Education, are not well off financially. She has always dreamed of a life of leisure with attentive servants and a large home, but her lifestyle is decidedly more modest. Ashamed of her social standing, she no longer visits Madame Forestier, and old school friend who has become rich.

• Rising Action

When the Loisels are invited to a ball, Madame Loisel becomes very upset, insisting that she has nothing appropriate to wear to such an event. Hoping to make his wife feel better, Monsieur Losiel offers to buy her a new dress. As the ball approaches, Madame Loisel again becomes anxious because she has no jewelleries to wear. She then decided to pays her old friend a visit the next day. She is welcomed and encouraged to borrow any piece of jewelry that she desires and she selected a beautiful diamond necklace.

• Climax

At the ball, Madame Loisel enjoys herself immensely and many men notice her. She dances until 4:00 in the morning and then she and her husband return home in a decrepit cab. She then realized that she has lost the diamond necklace. Her husband spends several hours retracing their steps but finds nothing. They decided to replace the necklace without telling Madame Forestier and they go heavily in debt.

• Falling Action

Years of toil and grueling work in an effort to repay their debt ages Madame Loisel so she looks quite older than her years. After ten long years of poverty, however, they finally pay off their entire debt. Still, Madame Loisel wistfully and fondly remembers the evening of the ball.

• Resolution

One fine day, Madame Loisel runs into Madame Forestier, who still looks young and beautiful. Madame Loisel tell her friend the whole story. Madame Forestier, who has not realized that her necklace had been replaced with another, reveals that the original, made of imitation diamonds, was not valuable.

If reading is boring, why not watch it ! Enjoy the video ! :D

We hope this helps ! Regards.