Over the centuries, literature has constantly reflected the interests and activities of a people. Therefore, certain themes have been dominant in world literature from ancient times to the present day. One such theme is greed and generosity, explored in the French short story "The Necklace" by Guy de Maupassant. On August 5, 1850, Maupassant was born near Normandy, France, where he lived for most of his childhood. He was the first son of Laure Le Poittevin and Gustave de Maupassant, both from prestigious bourgeois families. When Maupassant was eleven, his parents were legally divorced, and both he and his brother lived with their mother until the age of thirteen, when he attended a Catholic seminary. But Maupassant's hostility towards religion was evident because he deliberately got himself expelled soon after. Despite this setback, Maupassant's education did not end there: he finished his general studies at a boarding school in Rauen where he studied poetry and played a leading role in plays (Wilson 167). Guy de Maupassant's studies were however abruptly interrupted once he was drafted into the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and positioned in Normandy. Upon returning a year later, Maupassant's experiences during the war greatly influenced his view of society and human nature, which would be evident in his novels and short stories. (“Maupassant”). In 1878, Maupassant was transferred to the Ministry of Education and became editor of several newspapers such as Le Gualois and Gil-Blas, newspapers in which he would later publish many of his stories. It was in 1880 that Maupassant published the story that many consider his first book...... middle of paper ...... of its characters makes the story less a tale of Madame Loisel's rise and fall than a work of social criticism: “Those two people, husband and wife, are real; what surrounds them is real – real, perhaps in a broad and typical way rather than in an individualized way” (O'Faolain 177). Eventually diagnosed with syphilis, which he contracted in 1870, Maupassant's health steadily worsened as the years passed. Then, following a failed suicide attempt on January 2, 1892, Maupassant was committed to a sanatorium until his death the following year, on July 6, 1893. The influence Maupassant had on European literature was enormous. Many of his works have been translated into several languages ​​and he is often considered one of the fathers of the modern short story, having influenced writers such as Somerset Maugham, O. Henry, Anton Chekhov and Henry James..