Reflections 2

Moonlight-Guy de Maupassant
http://www.classicshorts.com/stories/Moonlight.html

After reading the last short story, The Donkey, by above author, I was just dying to know whether this guy was really that sick or if he was just having a bad hair day when he wrote The Donkey. And this next short story, which is about feelings and love, has proven that de Maupassant is not entirely mad, but perhaps a more inflective person who just went crazy due to physical illness later in life. Seems like life in those days was quite dramatic, especially with love and all that.

At the start of the story, when the author described how Madame Julie waited expectantly for her sister, Madame Henriette, who was due to arrive any minute after being away for five weeks, I could empathise with her, and could feel that feeling of expectancy, impatience; feeling that time passes too slowly, and that the person you wait for could never come too soon. And before they even greeted each other, they hugged each other first. Then they started asking each other how they were, and how their families were getting on. I could really feel the warmth and joy that comes from being with someone close to heart.

Then, Madame Julie saw her sister's locks of white hair. When I read that, I thought, Oh no, not another sadistic story. But I also felt with the younger sister, who became demanding with her elder sister, as love sometimes makes us. And when Madame Henriette poured out her feelings, de Maupassant wrote that Madame Julie simply "listened". Now, not to be sexist or anything, but I am quite surprised that as a guy de Maupassant knew that what a sad and troubled heart wanted was a listening ear. I guess I've always thought women were better in that area. But despite what I have always thought he was able to understand, as anyone who has ever been troubled will. Till now I always thought guys were all out of touch with their hearts. Oh well. I stand corrected, at least for this exception.

I can also see that de Maupassant was quite a romantic person. He is able to connect feelings with things of beauty. I've always found that guys are quite unsentimental and insensitive to all these things of beauty, as I've all too often found in two classic examples, my brother and father. My elder brother will always start telling me all sorts of facts about rainbows when all I want to do is enjoy them, while my father never watches romantic movies. Hence I always have to be the one to accompany my mother. Not that I mind it, anyway. But as I was saying, de Maupassant knew how it felt to have to bottle up feelings; the frustration of not having a way to express one's emotion. It really feels like one is going to burst, like a balloon filled with too much air.

Finally, the thing that impressed me most was right at the end. When Madame Julie told her sister, "You see, sister, very often it is not a man that we love, but love itself. And your real lover that night was the moonlight", it seemed to me that de Maupassant knew how complex feelings were, and how easily feelings become mixed up with one another. Most importantly, he was able to know that they were different and sort them out using the characters in his story. Feelings of admiration, respect and love. Very few people my age, I have realised, actually know that they are different. For example, when they chase a pop singer, and they call it love, I feel that it is more of admiration, and out of a wish that every person has: to be someone important, and to fill that empty part in their hearts that asks, "Why am I here?" One cannot possibly love a person one does not know, unless that person first does something worthy of love. So how can they say they love a singer they have only known through the very public media? Guy de Maupassant also brought out the question of what love really is. To some people, love is just a feeling. I think, and this is my personal opinion, that true love is not just a feeling, but who you are with that someone. For example, in the story, Madame Henriette could finally realise her passion through someone who shared her love for the beauty of nature, and the moonlight that captured her heart. Because this person is able to feel with her, she feels a sense of satisfaction and fulfilment, and mistakes these feelings with the same love that she shares with her husband. She does love her husband, because he is good and kind and cares for her, but yet he is unable to fulfil her needs. So along comes this young man who is a kindred spirit, and who understood "everything that made me thrill", and one can hardly blame Madame Henriette for thinking that she was in love with him. The sensitivity of de Maupassant is also reflected through Madame Julie, who despite her young years, is able to think calmly and clearly and sort out her sister's feelings for her.

After reading the story, the only thing that came to my mind was: whoa. I mean, talk about being sensitive and emotionally heavy. Guy de Maupassant is able to through a simple story and a single line conclusion tell so much about emotion, that strange thing that most teenagers my age are just barely beginning to understand. What I really enjoyed about this story is the simplicity of the plot that is yet able to put through an important truth. Wow. I guess this gives me a whole new perspective. Also, I can see that France must have been quite a dramatic place to live in. Seems like a lot of stories with dramatic emotion are set in there, not least Les Miserables. I guess that is what has influenced the main themes of de Maupassant's short stories. He hasn't disappointed me so far.

Reflections 1

Short Story-The Donkey, by Guy de Maupassant
http://www.classicshorts.com/stories/donkey.html

My first reaction to this story: gross. Who in the world would write such a sick story? Two men living a wandering life, illegally killing rabbits, torturing a donkey, stealing boats. In a word: perverted. And what is it with that crazy Labouise, calling everyone his "sister". Its as if he wanted everyone else in the world to be a woman. Talk about gender discrimination.

Upon reading that these two men lived a wanderer's life, my first reaction was: oh, that kind of person. And when they killed those poor grey rabbits illegally, I really got mad. But yet somehow, I was compelled to read on and see just how mean these men could get.

Then I read the part when they killed the donkey. That was terrible! They didn't just kill it, they tortured it! Instead of just dealing a death blow, they shot it with smaller pellets just to see it bray and get hurt. And when the woman tried to save the donkey, they threatened to shoot her as well. How sadistic. When I read that part, I was hoping somehow that someone would come and save the donkey. The writer even described how the donkey twitched before it died, and its "mournful cry". Yuck. I don't think I've ever read such a sadistic story.

But yet, even as wanderers, Maillochon and Labouise are no fools. By the way they killed the rabbits one by one carefully and patiently, I doubt if they've ever been caught. Even when they are greedy, they are still able to fool others cleverly and make a quick buck. For instance, in the case of the donkey, Labouise managed to fool the innkeeper by describing the animal as large, grey and with no horns, making it sound so mysterious when it was only an ordinary donkey. Everyone knows donkeys can't be eaten, yet Labouise had the tack to say, "I don't know what it is!--but it's there. I'll give you back your money if you find nothing" meaning that even if the innkeeper found the donkey, he could not get his money back from Labouise as he did not promise that it would be anything, just that it would be there.

This story is indeed different from anything I've ever read. For instance, this is one of the rare stories where men who do evil actually get away with it. I was hoping that the donkey wouldn't die, and that the men would be repayed for their evil deeds, and I was disappointed. Yet if things had turned out the way I had hoped, this story would be no different from all the others, and I guess you could say this is what makes this story unique.

P.S. Guy de Maupassant suffered from syphillis, a disease that caused increasing mental disorder. At the height of his illness, he tried to commit suicide and was admitted to a private asylum as Passy, in Paris. I suppose that accounts for the "uniqueness" of this story. Surprisingly, he was once a civil servant in the ministry of education.