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The Research Project Andrew Gottlieb

Students in English 201 are required to write a Research Project. The paper must be 6 pages

and satisfy all of the specification in the syllabus to receive credit. On an additional seventh page

students are required to list Works Cited. The purpose of the assignment is to familiarize

students with the conventions and challenges involved in writing a Research Project. These

involve critical thinking, presenting thesis-centered arguments, and citing sources in accordance

with the MLA (Modern Language Association).

The Research Project must focus on one to three primary texts. Primary texts are those

belonging to one of the four literary genres: short stories, plays, poems, or novels. Primary

texts for the Project cannot be a biography, a personal narrative, a magazine or a newspaper

article. The work must also be published. Any unpublished work is not acceptable for this

assignment. Students have the option to select a text of their own choosing as long as it meets

with these specifications but are encouraged to use one of the three assignments done prior to the

Project during the semester as a basis for the final paper. A further requirement for the Research

Project is the use of two to four secondary sources. Secondary sources are: biographies,

literary criticism, and historical works. These must be published. Do not cite online sources

such as Wikipedia or Spark Notes on your Works Cited page. If you do use Wikipedia, cite the

published sources listed at the end of the document.

Regarding the structure of the Research Project, students are required to have an introduction and

a conclusion. All arguments must be thesis-centered, meaning that they will be evaluated on the

basis of how well they support the central idea and refute opposing viewpoints.

I have provided a sample outline on page 3 and a sample paper on page 12 of this handout.

(April 2020 Edition)

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The Research Project:

Write 6 double-space pages about the life and work

of Guy de Maupassant.

A paper outline is on page 3 of this handout.

A sample essay is available on page 12 of this handout.

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Part 1 – Introduction About the Author:

Write a first draft of your introduction. You can and show it to me prior to handing it in.

1. Copy and paste five or more of the biographical passages on pages 4-6 of this handout into a

Word document. If you use other sources, they must be reliable. This means that they must

be published and NOT Internet sources.

2. String these passages together with transitional sentences. You can use my sample paper to

guide you. The sample paper is on page 12 of this handout.

3. The last sentence of your introduction should transition smoothly into the body of your

paper. Since you can recycle your short story paper into your research paper, this transitional

sentence should connect with whatever portion of the short story paper you use. For

example, if your short story essay begins with a discussion of reality, the last sentence of our

research paper introduction should say something about Maupassant’s view of that question.

Example: Just as Maupassant was disillusioned so were some of his characters. The goal of

this paper is to consider the similarities between the author and the people he wrote about.

Part 2 – Maupassant’s Writing:

Write an interpretation of one or several of Maupassant’s stories.

You can recycle the body of your first essay in this section. This means that you can copy and

paste your first short story essay into your research paper. You can also expand upon this by

discussing other stories that relate to your main idea.

Part 3 - Conclusion:

Write what Maupassant and the characters in his story have in common.

Also consider what we all have in common with Maupassant and his characters.

How are his concerns and his writing universal? One underlying theme of Maupassant’s life and

work is disillusionment. We can all relate to this since we have all faced disappointments of all

kinds.

Part 4 – Works Cited: Any academic paper must cite its sources. In the MLA format this is done on the last page of the

essay. The works must be cited on a separate page. To write your works cited page, copy and

paste the sources you have selected from the Book List on page 8 of this handout and/or

whatever other sources you choose to include. Do NOT include the library call numbers I have

provided on the c on your Works Cited Page.

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Secondary Sources for the Research Project:

Your grade for the research project will depend in

part on whether or not you use secondary published

sources.

Secondary sources can be biography, literary criticism, or

historical works.

For this assignment biographical texts are required.

WARNING:

Students are NOT permitted use any online secondary sources for the Research Project.

Research Projects citing online sources will receive a zero credit. This means that any secondary

sources including the designations http, .com, .org, etc. are unacceptable. E-texts ARE

acceptable provided a publisher is designated.

The citations below are provided to help students avoid the risks of not receiving credit for

failing to following citation protocols for the research project. You can copy and paste the

following quotes into your paper and works cited page.

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Biographical Texts for The 201 Research Project

Loneliness, Isolation, Disillusionment, and Cynicism:

Guy de Maupassant – A Day in the Country and Other Stories. Translated with an Introduction

and Notes by David Coward. Oxford University Press. 1990.

1. “All the things which commonly pass for the charm of life – love, friendship, happiness – are

so many illusions which nature allows us to compensate for the iron grip in which we are

held” (Coward xvi).

Wallace, Albert H. Guy de Maupassant. Twayne Publishers. New York. Copyright 1973.

2. Concerning Maupassant Wallace writes,

“His inclination toward morbidity would increase alarmingly by the odors of his medications.

The more severe his disease, the more necessary isolation became to him and paradoxically,

the more extensive were his fears of being alone. He tormented himself with loneliness,

however, perhaps in a mood of self-flagellation for not having followed the teachings of his

“father” during his younger days” (Wallace 22).

3. “Maupassant’s self-imposed solitude led to fear and provided him with an uncanny insight

into the terror that loneliness can multiply even in the most sound of his race. This

comprehension of terror is what gives his fantastic stories their extraordinary credible

quality. The stories Lui?, Le Horla, and Qui Sait? are among his most widely read and

appreciated. The autobiographic character of these stories leaves us with a fairly extensive

image of what Maupassant suffered, and hence they will be studied in detail in the

appropriate place” (Wallace 22).

4. “I fear the arriving winter. I feel alone, and my long, solitary evenings are sometimes terrible.

Often when I’m alone seated at my desk with my lamp burning sadly before me, I experience

such complete moments of distress that I no longer know where to turn”

(Wallace 45).

5. Wallace explains that “loneliness was a major factor in the development of Maupassant’s

affliction. Living too much to himself, he formed certain ideas whose very inalterability was

their poison” (Wallace 105).

6. Wallace explains that in Maupassant’s story Miss Harriot “solitude leads to suicide,” that “it

was loneliness that caused the heroine to cast herself into a well” (Wallace 106). Wallace

goes on to quote Maupassant who writes, “We are the eternal playthings of ever renewing,

stupid and charming illusions” (Wallace 231).

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7. According to Wallace “disillusionment with life is so prominent a factor in his work and in

his mental difficulties” (Wallace 114).

8. Michael G. Lerner. Maupassant. George Braziller New York.

9. In May, 1880, following the death of Gustave Flaubert, Maupassant’s close friend and mentor,

he wrote a letter to Emile Zola, another one of his friends and fellow writers.

“The farther the death of poor Flaubert recedes in time, the more his memory haunts me and the

more my heart is grieved and my mind is at a loss…. I feel at this moment in an excruciating

way the futility of living, the uselessness of all one’s efforts, the monstrous monotony of

everyone and everything and that moral and spiritual isolation in which we all live but from

which I suffered less when I could chat with him; for he had like no one else that understanding

of philosophical thought which opened up new horizons on everything and kept one’s mind at a

sublime level from where one could look down on the whole of mankind and realize the

unending wretchedness of everything…Flaubert’s death thus aroused Maupassant’s latent

pessimism as well as leaving him both more lonely and more insecure than before”

(Lerner142-143).

Edward Daniel Sullivan. Maupassant the Short Stories. Barron’s Educational Series Inc.

Great Neck, New York.

Of Maupassant, Sullivan writes:

10. “It is clear from the stories we have studies the one great premise which underlies his whole

art is his belief in the utter disproportion between appearance and reality – everywhere

and in all forms. His stories are written out of a need to correct that disproportion, if only

fragmentarily, to lift the mask of appearance to expose hypocrisy, to provide an

unobstructed view of a piece of the world as it is, not as it is purported to be. Such a view of

life, when held by an indignant optimist, generally results in high-minded attempts at reform.

For Maupassant the result is sadness, and sometimes even fear; the reality that lies behind

appearance is no more comforting – probably even less so – than the outer falsity itself”

(Sullivan 57).

11. “As an artist Maupassant perfects his senses in order to reveal life as it is, but at the same

time he believes his senses to be deceptive. He is haunted both by what he may miss and by

what he may find, but all he can do is continue his exploration to the end. He justifies his

own activity by the fact that, given our imperfect unreliable senses, most men misuse

them and remain blind and deaf to much that goes on about them…” (Sullivan 59).

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Madness, Hallucination, Syphilis, and Attempted Suicide:

Guy de Maupassant – A Day in the Country and Other Stories. Translated with an Introduction

and Notes by David Coward. Oxford University Press. 1990.

12. He was “removed to a clinic, suffering from the syphilitic paresis which had driven him

mad. He died on 6 July 1893, at the age of 42” (Coward xvi).

Wallace, Albert H. Guy de Maupassant. Twayne Publishers. New York. Copyright 1973.

13. “There is little doubt that hallucinations so subverted Maupassant’s capacity for drawing

rational conclusions in the latter part of his illness that he finally became incapable of

distinguishing between his wildest fancies and reality. The last years were sad”

(Wallace 22).

14. Wallace quotes Maupassant who wrote, “Fixed ideas have the tenacity of gnawing, incurable

maladies. Once entered into the mind, they devour it, leave it no longer free to think of

anything, to be interested in anything or to have an inclination in the slightest toward

anything” (Wallace105).

15. In one of the most insightful passages in his book, Wallace writes, in reference to

Maupassant’s story Suicide, “The letter’s words provide a foreboding of what must have been

Maupassant’s thoughts when he contemplated suicide. The hero has decided to kill himself

because of an awareness of the irremediable brutality of existence in which he has failed to

find a single strain of poetry his youthful naiveté has assigned to it” (Wallace 114).

16. Wallace explains that in Maupassant’s story Miss Harriot “solitude leads to suicide,” that “it

was loneliness that caused the heroine to cast herself into a well” (Wallace 106). Wallace

goes on to quote Maupassant who writes, “We are the eternal playthings of ever renewing,

stupid and charming illusions” (Wallace 231).

Harold Bloom. Bloom's Major Short Story Writers Guy de Maupassant. Chelsea House

Publishers. Philadelphia.

17. “Maupassant’s own life ended badly; by his late twenties, he was syphilitic. At thirty-nine

the disease affected his mind, and he spent his final years locked in an asylum, after a

suicide attempt. His most upsetting horror story, “The Horla,” has a complex and ambiguous

relation to his illness and its consequences. The nameless protagonist of the story is perhaps

a syphilitic going mad, though nothing that Maupassant narrates actually tells us to make

such an inference” (Bloom 13).

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Book List For Your Works Cited Page

Available at the BMCC Library

1. Francis Steegmuller. Maupassant: A Lion in the Path - Call Number: PQ2353 .S8 2007

2. Richard Fusco. Maupassant and the American short story : the influence of form at the turn of

the century, by - Call Number: PS374 .S5 F87 1994

3. Harold Bloom. Bloom's Major Short Story Writers Guy de Maupassant. Chelsea House

Publishers. Philadelphia. - Call Number: PQ2356 .G89 2004

4. Albert H. Wallace. Guy de Maupassant, Albert H. Wallace. Twayne Publishers. New York.

Copyright 1973 - Call Number: PQ2353 .W3

5. Michael G. Lerner. Maupassant. George Braziller. New York.

call number PQ 2353 .L44

6. Maupassant in the Hall of Mirrors: Ironies of Repetition in the Work of Guy de Maupassant,

by Trevor A. Le V. Harris, Call Number: PQ2357 .H37 1990

7. Edward Daniel Sullivan. Maupassant the Short Stories. Barron’s Educational Series Inc.

Great Neck, New York. Call Number PQ 2355.S8 1962.

8. Albert, Henri René Guy de Maupassant. A Stroll. classicreader.com/book/610/1/.

9. Albert, Henri René Guy de Maupassant. All Over. Translators: Albert M.C. McMaster, A.E.

Henderson, Mme. Quesada, & others. E-texts.

10. Guy de Maupassant – A Day in the Country and Other Stories. Translated with an Introduction

and Notes by David Coward. Oxford University Press. 1990.

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Specifications

1. Each essay must be stapled in the upper left-hand corner.

Papers that are not stapled will not be accepted.

2. Each page of each essay must have typed page numbers in the upper right-hand corner.

Papers without typed page numbers in the upper right hand corner will not be

accepted.

3. Each essay must be typed. Essays that are not typed will not be accepted.

4. Font size must be 12.

5. Font style must be Times New Roman.

6. Each paragraph must be indented.

7. There must be no more than one double-space between paragraphs.

8. The name of the student, professor, course, and date must be flush left with a double-space

between each. See example on the following page.

9. Each essay must be double-spaced.

10. For citations more than one sentences, use the following specifications.

See example on page 9.

a. single-space

b. font size 10

c. left indent at 1 right indent at 5.5.

11. Quotation marks and the appropriate MLA citation for all quotes must be used. The absence

of quotation marks where needed is PLAGIARISM. See example of internal punctuation

on the following page. WARNING: Omission of quotation marks is grounds for an F for

the paper and possibly for the final grade.

12. All sources used in the essay must be cited in a “Works Cited” page and be done according to

MLA formats. See example on the page after the following page.

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Format First Page This is an example of the top of the first page of a paper.

Use double-spaces. The title must be a double-space below the date and centered.

See MLA Handbook - Seventh Edition. 4.3. Heading And Title. 116.

Internal Punctuation

Long Quotations This is an example of how to do a citation longer than one sentence.

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John Smith

Professor Abraham

English 201

May 7, 2009

Greek Tragedy

When citing a source in the text do as follows: “Oedipus in the play is a free agent” (Fagles 149).

If you provide the name of the author in the sentence, you do not need to include it in the parenthetical citation.

Fagles maintains that “Oedipus in the play is a free agent” (149).

When paraphrasing do as follows: Fagles maintains that Oedipus has free will (149).

When quoting without citing a non-published source, do as follows: My father always said, “follow your heart.”

.

“In the very first year of our century Sigmund Freud in his Interpretation of Dreams offered

a famous and influential interpretation of Oedipus the King:

Oedipus Rex is what is known as a tragedy of destiny. Its tragic effect is said to lie in the contrast

between supreme will of the gods and the vain attempts of mankind to escape the evil that threatens

them. The lesson which, it is said, the deeply moved spectator should learn from the tragedy is

submission to the divine will and realization of his own impotence.

(Trans. James Strachey)

This passage is of course a landmark in the history of modern thought, and it is fascinating to observe

that this idea, which, valid or not, has had enormous influence, stems from an attempt to answer a

literary problem – why does the play have this overpowering effect on modern audiences?”

(Knox, Bernard. Sophocles – The Three Theban Plays. Translated by Robert Fagles. Penguin Books.

Copyright by Bernhard Knox, 1982. 132. Print.)

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Works Cited Page

This is an example of the top of the first page of a works-cited list.

Entries are in alphabetical order with second lines of each entry indented (hanging indentation).

See MLA Handbook - Seventh Edition. 131.

The Works Cited page must be on a separate page.

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Works Cited

Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of Hamlet Prince of Denmark. Edited by Edward Hubler.

A Signet Classic. Copyright by Edward Hubler, 1963. Print.

Sophocles. The Three Theban Plays – Antigone, Oedipus the King, Oeidipus at Colonus.

Translated By Robert Fagles. Penguin Books. Copyright by Robert Fagles, 1982, 1984. Print.

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Andrew Gottlieb SAMPLE RESEARCH PROJECT

Professor Gottlieb

English 201- (section number)

July 12, 2013

The Misery of Maupassant

Guy de Maupassant is regarded as one the foremost of French writers. The goal of this

paper is to discuss Maupassant’s vision of life and how it may have been, at least to some extent,

the cause of his suffering and his attempted suicide. It was on New Year’s Day 1892 that

Maupassant made the attempt. He was “removed to a clinic, suffering from the syphilitic paresis

which had driven him mad. He died on 6 July 1893, at the age of 42” (Coward xvi).

Maupassant was not the most joyful of men. In his book Guy de Maupassant, Albert H.

Wallace refers to a letter Maupassant wrote to his mother in which he speaks of his loneliness.

“I fear the arriving winter. I feel alone, and my long, solitary evenings are sometimes terrible.

Often when I’m alone seated at my desk with my lamp burning sadly before me, I experience

such complete moments of distress that I no longer know where to turn” (45). Wallace explains

that “loneliness was a major factor in the development of Maupassant’s affliction. Living too

much to himself, he formed certain ideas whose very inalterability was their poison” (Wallace

105). He quotes Maupassant who wrote, “Fixed ideas have the tenacity of gnawing, incurable

maladies. Once entered into the mind, they devour it, leave it no longer free to think of anything,

to be interested in anything or to have an inclination in the slightest toward anything” (105).

Wallace explains that in Maupassant’s story Miss Harriot “solitude leads to suicide,” that “it was

loneliness that caused the heroine to cast herself into a well” (Wallace 106). Wallace goes on to

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quote Maupassant who writes, “We are the eternal playthings of ever renewing, stupid and

charming illusions” (114). The statement,” Wallace explains, “is also in complete accord with

Maupassant’s disillusionment with life that is so prominent a factor in his work and in his mental

difficulties” (114).

The key in all of these comments is disillusionment. In his introduction to A Day in the

Country and Other Stories, David Coward provides a vivid account of Maupassant’s cynical

view of the world. Of the authors world view he writes, “All the things which commonly pass

for the charm of life – love, friendship, happiness – are so many illusions which nature allows us

to compensate for the iron grip in which we are held” (xvi). Maupassant’s misery and possibly

his suicide attempt were rooted in the loss of illusions. In one of the most insightful passages in

his book, Wallace writes, in reference to Maupassant’s story Suicide, “The letter’s words provide

a foreboding of what must have been Maupassant’s thoughts when he contemplated suicide. The

hero has decided to kill himself because of an awareness of the irremediable brutality of

existence in which he has failed to find a single strain of poetry his youthful naiveté has

assigned to it” (Wallace 114).

Maupassant was not born a cynic. As a young man he had a poetic and possibly naïve

view of life. As time went he was persuaded by experience to adopt a darker view of things.

This change is a loss of faith, a loss of what, after an apparent awakening has occurred, comes to

be viewed as illusions. Whether love, friendship, and happiness are illusions is a matter for

debate. It is important to note that such a loss is not necessarily predicated on a realization of

truth. It may often be the result of a shift in perception. One day the world seems beautiful and

loving, the next it seems ugly and cruel. One day one may see himself as a success; the next he

may see himself as an utter failure. One perception is not more or less real than another.

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Maupassant’s loss of illusion may well have been a loss of faith. He may have lost faith

in the things that for him made life worth living. As we get older, we go through certain

experiences that disturb or shock us. It is our vulnerability in these matters that may lead us

to abandon our beliefs, to disavow our faith, and to lose our confidence and our resolve. This,

I believe, is what happened to Maupassant. It is no thus not surprising that disillusionment is a

recurrent theme in his stories. Two such narratives are All Over and A Stroll.

In All Over, the protagonist, Lormerin, a middle aged bachelor, undergoes a devastating

shift in self-esteem. The story opens with Lormerin gazing admiringly at himself in the mirror.

“Lormerin is still alive!” he proclaims. It is evident that Lormerin is aware that he is no longer

young but that he is still attractive. We may also infer that Lormerin’s self-esteem is dependent

in large part upon his appearance. Various details in the narrative may also lead us to conclude

that he is narcissistic. In preparation for his rendezvous with Lise, a woman with whom he had

a love affair in his youth and who has now sent him an invitation to dine with her, he inspects

himself “from head to foot” and thinks, “She must look very old, older than I look.” This seems

to delight him for he feels “gratified at the thought of showing himself to her still handsome, still

fresh, of astonishing her, perhaps of filling her with emotion, and making her regret those bygone

days so far, far distant” (Maupassant 2). He then proceeds to make “his toilet with feminine

coquetry” (Maupassant 2). Apparently, Lormerin’s motivation for seeing Lise is not so much to

enjoy the pleasure of her company and to give her the pleasure of his so much as it is to fortify

his vanity and to do so at the expense of hers. It is for this reason that we may hesitate to feel too

much sympathy for Lormerin when by the end of the day his confidence is so painfully

compromised. We may argue that Lise is the one responsible for Lormerin’s loss of self-esteem,

that she has manipulated the situation to bring her quarry down, but this could only have been

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accomplished if the quarry had not made himself vulnerable. Lormerin would never have been

so easy to manipulate had he not placed such a high premium on his appearance. An identity

predicated on externals is a flimsy one indeed, and so Lormerin’s self-esteem is an easy target

for the woman who seems to see as clearly through him as she might to the bottom of a shallow

pond.

When Lormerin looks at himself in the mirror at the end of the story, he sees a very

different man than he had earlier that day. At the moment that he sees this “lamentable image,”

and proclaims “All over, Lormerin,” he has in essence adopted a new identity. Yet, as far as his

physical appearance is concerned it is highly unlikely that any significant physical change if any

has occurred. The only alteration in Lormerin is in his mind. The cause of this change is his

encounter with Lise and her daughter Renee.

The question is: which of the two images is genuine? From Lormerin’s point of view,

the last one is more objective. Yet, it is the way Lormerin looks at himself and the way he feels

that has altered his perception. It is reasonable to say that neither of the two images is more

genuine than the other. Each is a manifestation of Lormerin’s state of mind. It’s true that he

may have not paid attention to some of his wrinkles when he looked at himself in the morning,

but it is his way of focusing on such details at the end and the idea he has come to embrace about

himself that alters his self-esteem. To say that he is disillusioned implies that his earlier, more

cheerful impression of himself is false.

Perhaps, this is what Maupassant wants us to think. We cannot be sure of this, but we do

have some idea of how he felt about his own life. Based on the citations mentions at the outset

of our discussion, we have good reason to believe that Maupassant was suffering from feelings

of disillusionment, that he had adopted a cynical view of life and that, like Lormerin, he may

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have been suffering from a loss of self-esteem. It is in this respect that it is reasonable to assume

a commonality between the author and the protagonist of All Over. Like Lormerin, Maupassant

may have come to the conclusion that his life, or rather his vision of life and of himself, was all

over.

Another one of Maupassant’s stories in which the suffering of the protagonist hinges on

disillusionment is A Stroll. Leras, an old man working as a bookkeeper for Messieurs Labuze

and Company, undergoes a realization, if so it can be called, that has a far more devastating

consequence than that of Lormerin’s. Leras commits suicide. We are led to believe that this

rash act is precipitated by an experience he has in the Bois de Boulogne, a park in Paris

frequented by lovers and prostitutes. During his stroll Leras is approached by prostitutes.

It is then that he feels as though he is “enveloped in darkness by something disagreeable”

(Maupassant 2). He thinks of “all this venal or passionate love, of all these kisses, sold or given,

which were passing by in front of him” (Maupassant 2). Not only is Leras confronted with the

feeling of being an outsider. Now, he sees through the veneer of romance. The charm of the

evening has transformed into something dark and disagreeable. Whatever may have passed for

love he now realizes is only a masquerade, a façade behind which is something sinister and ugly.

But it is not so much the tawdriness of the scene that Leras finds disturbing, although that may

be a part of it. The source of his dismay is that, unlike the people before him, he has “scarcely”

known love. Now, he looks back “at the life which he had led, so different from everybody

else, so dreary, so mournful, so empty,” and has an awakening. “And suddenly, as though a veil

had been torn from his eyes, he perceived the infinite misery, the monotony of his existence: the

past, present and future misery; his last day similar to his first one, with nothing before him,

behind him or

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about him, nothing in his heart or any place” (Maupassant 2). Leras sees, possibly for the first

time, the emptiness of his life. Everyone else, the “whole of humanity” seems to be “intoxicated

with joy, pleasure and happiness. He alone is looking on and he sees that “tomorrow he would

again be alone, always alone, more so than anyone else.” Leras imagines how “pleasant it must

be in old age to return home and find the little children.” But Leras has no wife, no children and

is consigned, as far as he can tell to spend the rest of his life in solitude.

What is significant here is that he sees himself as a being entirely different from everyone

else. He doesn’t stop to consider that there may be others like him. Nor, is he apparently able

to see the beauty of the evening he had been enjoying. It is the same evening, the same place. The

only thing that has changed is Leras’ way of seeing it. Even his room, the one he has lived in for

so many years, is no longer the same for him: “…a feeling of distress filled his soul; and the place

seemed to him more mournful even than his little office” (Maupassant 3). It is not Leras’ room

that has changed but the way he sees it.

In the end, Leras hangs himself on a tree. The cause of the suicide “could not be

suspected. Perhaps a sudden access of madness!” The author does not conclude his tale by

offering a definitive explanation of Leras’ decision to end his life. He has however given us

good reason to believe that the reason his protagonist takes such a drastic action is because he

has had a revelation. Leras’ vision of himself and his life has been altered by his experience in

the park. It is not, however, the scene that has altered Leras. Leras has altered himself. He is

the sole agent of his transformation.

The question remains, has Leras really had a revelation? Is he really more awake at the

end of the story than he has been his whole life? Has a veil truly been lifted or has another come

along to take its place? Does Leras see the truth of his life or is he simply blind to the

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possibilities that surround him? If he is enveloped in darkness, is it not because he is doing

the enveloping? Perhaps, one veil was lifted only to be replaced by another. In the end, Leras

may never really have opened his eyes. He lives in Paris, a city full of beauty, charm, and

opportunities but is unable to participate in all it has to offer. It is not circumstance that destroys

Leras but the way in which he perceives it.

What the protagonists in All Over and A Stroll have in common is disillusionment. They

experience a loss faith in the image or idea they had of themselves and of their lives. Because he

no longer sees himself as a youthful and attractive man, Lormerin feels that his life is all over.

Leras, who is confronted with the realization that he has been leading a loveless existence and

the feeling that there is no hope of changing this, commits suicide. One wonders if Maupassant

went through a similar revelation prior to his suicide attempt or if he had been living with the

pain of such a revelation for years before he made it.

It is not difficult to see the connection between Leras, Lormerin and Maupassant.

Maupassant’s writing was in large part a vehicle through which he expressed his feelings about

his own life. His characters, or at least some of them, are reflections of the dark and cynical

view which engulfed the author and which in the end augmented the pain that led to his

attempted suicide. Maupassant’s physical condition due to syphilitic paresis had much to do

with the deterioration of his mind and spirit, but we cannot discount his cynicism as a

participating factor in the suffering he endured and in his attempt to end his life.

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Works Cited

Guy de Maupassant, Albert, Henri René. A Stroll. classicreader.com/book/610/1/.

Guy de Maupassant, Albert, Henri René. All Over. Translators: Albert M.C. McMaster, A.E.

Henderson, Mme. Quesada, & others. E-texts.

Guy de Maupassant – A Day in the Country and Other Stories. Translated with an Introduction

and Notes by David Coward. Oxford University Press. 1990.

Wallace, Albert H. Guy de Maupassant. Twayne Publishers. New York. Copyright 1973.

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