Comparing Stories of Guy de Maupassant and Thomas Hardy
Comparing Stories of Guy de Maupassant and Thomas Hardy
Both the stories we were asked to read contain elements of mystery. They both are designed to make the reader think and make their own conclusions about what is going to happen at the end. The stories make you want to read on to find out what is going to happen. The stories are designed to trick you in to believing what you think is going happen but in fact it doesn’t. They do this by placing Red Herrings in to the story to confuse the reader. There is also often a twist at the end of mystery stories.
Maupassant’s story mainly surrounds the issues concerning the conditions and psychology surrounding vengeance, this makes the story seem gruesome from the beginning because as she has a murder to gain revenge on you think that she will do something like that back. Hardy is focused on writing a story in which the mystery involves issues surrounding a community. The community ideas in this story make you think about the safety of everybody all together in the small cottage but it fact the mystery makes you wonder how safe it is.
When Hardy first starts to introduce the story he is very descriptive when talking about the rural setting. He describes the cottage as ‘lonely’ and the land surrounding it ‘irregular’ the language which he uses to describe the area, the night and the cottage bring on a sense of mystery because it is a very quiet area, which usually has quite bad weather. Which means that there is not many people around to see any crimes take place.
‘The wind up here blew unmistakably when it did blow and the rain hit hard whenever it fell.’
As it was in the middle of nowhere except for the two paths nobody would see anything happen and a lot of strangers would pass along the two paths to the towns. Again this brings on a sense of mystery because you would see strangers passing to and from town but you would not know why they are leaving or entering the town.
Hardy makes the environment seem very realistic through the detail; this would make the reader feel as if they were at the scene if they could picture it. Hardy describes the community at...