"The Necklace" by Guy de Maupassant is an intriguing short story about the misfortunes of a couple, Madame Loisel and her husband, which ultimately lead them to live a life of regret and misery. These misfortunes are brought among the couple due to the Madame Loisel's never-ending greed and inability to appreciate what she has. Throughout the story, the selfishness of Madame Losiel is made very prevalent and as the reader is thinking about the story the want for more is a reoccurring motif. De Maupassant strategically manipulates the effects of juxtaposition, tone, and imagery to show that greed for material objects can make one's life unhappy and empty.

Greed is a major component to this piece of literature and to make it prominent de Maupassant chooses to juxtapose Madame Loisel's reality and her dreams, which allows the reader to clearly see her want for more. De Maupassant describes her as suffering from material components of her home such as the color of the walls and the way the chairs and curtains look; "things of which another woman of her rank would never even have been conscious" (de Maupassant 22). Making it easy for the reader to imply that greed and outward appearances have taken over her life and have become the top priority. In the same paragraph he describes her wants and desires which include grand items in an excessive amount. Because these differences are physically put right beside each other, the reader takes note on the fact that Madame Loisel is nowhere near contempt with her life. The reader then recognizes how much better Madame Loisel's life would be if she would appreciate what she has. De Maupassant places these two extreme perspectives on the life of Madame Loisel right beside each other to emphasize the unhappiness and emptiness of her life.

The way that a sentence is presented has a huge effect on the way that the reader interprets the text. De Maupassant gives Madame Loisel a negative tone throughout the story to make it evident to the reader that she is not a positive person whatsoever and that she can always have something better. The wording and tone of Madame Losiel's questions seem inconsiderate, "And what do you want me to put on my back?" and "Haven't you any more?" (de Maupassant 23-24). When the reader reads these questions they take note of how greedy and inconsiderate Madame Losiel is to others, which makes the readers look at Madame Loisel with a negative connotation. The questions that were asked by Madame Loisel could have been asked in a different way that gave off a different tone, but de Maupassant chose to have them asked in that way so that Madame Loisel's never-ending greed would be made apparent. Once de Maupassant has made Madame Loisel's greed noticeable he then proceeds to change the tone of Madame Loisel from one of selfishness to one of shamefulness by describing the things she must do to pay for the necklace. At the beginning of the piece she thought that she deserved way more than the average person, which is conveyed by the way that she communicates with people, such as; "What do you want me to do with that?" and "Nothing. Only I have no dress, and therefore I can't go to this ball. Give your card to some colleague whose wife is better equipped than I." (de Maupassant 23). Now she comes to the realization that material things have ruined her life, which is portrayed by the way that she has to work to pay for the necklace, "She washed the dishes, using her rosy nails on the greasy pots and pans. She washed the dirty linen, the shirts, the dish cloths, which she dried upon a line" (de Maupassant 27). In the end, Madame Loisel finds out that the stress over the necklace was completely wasted and that she is left with the minimal factors for life because she has worked for so long to pay for the necklace. The shift in tone allows the reader to see the emphasis that greed is the reason for the emptiness in Madame Loisel's life.

The transformation of Madame Loisel throughout the story of "the Necklace" is one of the key components in allowing the reader to notice what greed can do to a person. De Maupassant accomplishes this transformation by using very descriptive imagery at the beginning and end of the story to contrast the luxury of Madame Loisel's thoughts at the beginning to her actual appearance at the end of the story so the reader can physically see the transformation and how her physical attributes near the end correlate with her greed. Maupassant describes Madame Loisel's dreams with words such as "delicate" (22), "coquettish" (22) and  "ancient silk" (22) to show that her wants and desires are very classy and unreasonable. The reader seems to question Madame Loisel's ability to grasp reality and deal with what she is given because her dreams are so luxurious. In contrast, Maupassant chose to use words such as, "rough" (27), "frowsy" (27), and "red hands" (27) to portray the image of a woman of the lower class who has had to work very hard to get by. The descriptive words that de Maupassant uses to describe the appearance of Madame Loisel show the reader how greed can ruin one's life. These words also make it easy for the reader to identify that the source of Madame Loisel's hardship and inability to enjoy life all along was her consistent greed for material objects. 

"She had no dresses, no jewels, nothing. And she loved nothing but that" (de Maupassant 22) sums up the major conflict in this text; Madame Loisel loved material things that would never satisfy her desires, instead of the little things in life. De Maupassant strategically chose to emphasize the juxtaposition of her dreams and reality by physically putting them beside each other, which allows easy access for the reader to contrast the two situations. He manipulated the way that Madame Loisel was portrayed to others which parallels the way that she comes off to the readers, ungrateful and unhappy. He transforms both Madame Loisel's physical appearance from that of a young woman to one of a lower class old woman though descriptive imagery near the beginning an end of the text. All of the literary elements have a common denominator, greed. It is Madame Loisel's never-ending greed throughout the story, which allows these elements to become prominent and show the reader that greed is the reason why Madame Loisel has lived a life of unhappiness and emptiness.
