The Necklace, Barn Burning And Paul's Case

Nineteenth century literature is full of allusions and examples of idealism and romantic subjectivism. Society at the time is quite preoccupied with the bourgeois lifestyle and seems to neglect reality. Stories like "The Necklace", "Barn Burning", and "Paul's Case" exemplify a Nietzschean rebellion against the constraints of social standards. Nietzsche wrote that "we [are] like shop windows in which we are continually arranging, concealing or illuminating the supposed qualities other ascribe to us - in order to deceive ourselves" (Curry). By this is meant that people in society portray a variety of false facades in order to fit in and feel a part of popular culture.

In Maupassant's, "The Necklace" readers find many examples of the nineteenth
This conflict emerges from a life of poverty and high-class surroundings. The boy's father is a poor sharecropper who is ejected from the county after burning down a barn. But when new work is found, the father is soon on ill term with the farm's owner. Amidst his fantasy surroundings, and his father's poor standard the boy's conflict develops. His father had told him, "you got to learn to stick to your own blood or you ain't going to have any blood to stick to you" (Faulkner 148). This represents the idealistic theme of supporting and standing by your family first. However, in reality, the boy's father is a poor example to follow or mimic. The boy's view of the big plantation house exemplifies his ambitions as well as the other side of his inner battle. To the boy, the home that is as "big as a courthouse" urges him to stay loyal to what is right according to a bourgeois society. His inner conflict reaches it climax when his father burns down another barn and is about to be shot by the farms owner. Nietzsche felt that, "every specific body strives to become master over all space and to extend its force (--its will to power:) and to thrust back all that resists its extension" (Curry). The boy is experiencing this and is forced to choose between his family and what society feels is right and true. After the death of his father, the boy makes his decision. He chooses to replace his father, with the father ideal. That is, he will be fathered by social standards and expectations from then