Franco-Prussian War ‘‘Two Friends’’ takes place during a spell of fine weather in January 1871, in the course of the German siege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian War. The effects of the war and the siege dominate the action of the story. The war grew out of rivalry between France and Prussia, the two predominant…
Tag: Short Stories
Two Friends by Guy de Maupassant – Literary Devices – Symbolism
Naturalism The generation of French authors before Maupassant, including such figures as Honore´ de Balzac and Maupassant’s mentor Gustave Flaubert, aimed at realism: the depiction of everyday life in realistic terms. This was opposed to the earlier Romantic movement, which emphasized the fantastic and the exotic, in language as well as in subject matter. E´mile…
Two Friends by Guy de Maupassant – Themes
Friendship The very title ‘‘Two Friends’’ suggests friendship as an important theme in de Maupassant’s story, and indeed the story revolves around the friendship of Morissot and Sauvage. The action of the story begins when the two meet, and, made idle by the war, have nothing better to do than reminisce about their friendship in…
Two Friends by Guy de Maupassant – Characters
Morissot Morissot is the first character mentioned in ‘‘Two Friends’’ and is one of the title characters. He is ‘‘a watchmaker by profession forced into retirement for the duration’’ of the siege of Paris. He is therefore wandering idly around the streets of Paris, wearing his National Guard uniform, when he meets his old friend…
Two Friends by Guy de Maupassant – Summary
Maupassant begins ‘‘Two Friends’’ with a description of conditions of privation inside the city of Paris after a few months of being besieged by the Prussian army during the Franco-Prussian war: ‘‘Paris hung by a thread. Sparrows were rare on the rooftops. The rat population in the sewers had thinned. People were eating anything.’’ The…
Once Upon A Time by Nadine Gordimer – Analysis
At the heart of Gordimer’s ‘‘Once Upon a Time’’ are two groups of people: the whites who live ‘‘in a suburb, in a city,’’ and the ‘‘people of another colour’’ who live elsewhere. In the story’s South Africa during the last years of the racial segregation policy known as apartheid, the differences between the groups…
Once Upon A Time by Nadine Gordimer – Setting – Apartheid
Apartheid In the late 1980s, as Gordimer was writing and publishing ‘‘Once Upon a Time,’’ forty years of official racial segregation in South Africa were coming to an end. For many decades, the black population, which made up about 80 percent of the population, had been oppressed by a white minority, who made up about…
Once Upon A Time by Nadine Gordimer – Literary Devices
Verisimilitude Most commonly, when reading short stories and novels, readers are expected to treat the material as though it were factual, to pretend—even with stories involving space travel or vampires—that the events described in the story actually happened. Readers sometimes describe this experience as being ‘‘caught up’’ in a story. They come to trust a…
Once Upon A Time by Nadine Gordimer – Themes – Apartheid
Apartheid Underlying everything that happens in ‘‘Once Upon a Time’’ is the specter of apartheid, or the government-directed racial segregation that was the law in South Africa from about 1949 to about 1990. Gordimer does not name the suburb where the story is set, nor the country where the suburb lies, just as she does…
Once Upon A Time by Nadine Gordimer – Characters
The Boy The boy, like all of the characters in the story-within-the-story, is never named, is not described, and does not speak. He is anonymous, faceless, silent, meant to allow the reader to see him as a representative of countless boys in his situation, rather than focusing on him as a unique individual. Little is…