"The Necklace" is a short story about a woman who wants nothing but happiness and to look pretty for a ball she and her husband were invited to.  She thinks her dreams are achievable until there is not enough money for it.   The problem starts when her husband bought her a beautiful dress.  The dress is so nice, that she needed more accessories to look as good as the dress.  The woman began to get so desperate that she asked her friend for a necklace to match the dress.  Being a kind friend, she let the woman borrow it.  She soon realizes that after a wild night at the ball, she is missing the necklace!  She begs her husband for help and after a long night of searching, he finds nothing. They then began to plan out how they will get her friend back a necklace similar to the one borrowed.  After getting a loan to buy a similar necklace, the husband and wife sell their house to try and pay it off.  At the end, we find that the friend's necklace was not very expensive.  Readers need to see this story from the husband's perspective and how he struggled.  The Linkin Park song "Lies Greed Misery" can be used to the story from the point of view of the husband at the end when they find out that the necklace was a waste of time to try to repay.   

There are many examples as to why Linkin Park's song is important to understanding the story "The Necklace".  The first obvious point is the tone of the singer.  There is a sense of hatred and anger in the song.  The husband is very upset because after all that they went through, she was not the only one who struggled. In the story, "He compromised all the rest of his life, risked his signature without even knowing if he could meet it" tells everything we need to know about his wife.  The fact that she wants more and more accessories when she got some brings out her bad side.  Her greed comes out while stressing over a dance.  The song says "What is it you want me to tell ya?  I'm not the failure" (Linkin Park) and this represents how disappointed the husband is that she could not own up to her mistakes and just tell her friend.  The whole situation was unnecessary and could have been avoided if she had just been responsible for her actions.  

Another way the song and story could be in conversation is the woman's selfishness and greed, she has caused much misery to the couple.  The song by Linkin Park says "You did it to yourself and it's over, Now let me show ya exactly how the breaking point sounds" (Linkin Park).  Just from these quotes, the reader gets a sense of an angered man that is tired of the woman's greediness and trying to fit in with the rich people around.  This could lead to a whole other story where the husband reached his breaking point and decided to leave her and move onto better things.  The story ends with "Oh, my poor Mathilde! Why, my necklace was paste.  It was worth at most five hundred francs!"  With this ending, we do not get to see the husband's side of his emotions.  It is important that the audience knows how he feels because the woman was not the only one affected throughout the story.  This could be a great way to introduce a new story based off the husband and his experience.  He had a great impact on the story including buying the dress with the money he was going to save up to buy himself a gun, trying to find the original necklace all night long, and working extra hard to help pay of the loan for a new necklace.

Most of the anger in this song is talking about seeing the wife suffer horribly.  The first part is saying "I wanna see you choke on your lies" (Linkin Park). This quote directly points to her constant lying about things.  The way she didn't tell her friend that she lost the necklace and told her friend that the necklace she gave her back was the same.  She clearly avoids her problems by lying and this quote explains what he thinks she should do with her lies.  One of the biggest mistakes that she makes is not owning up to the problem and telling the friend.  If she would have done this, her and her husband would have known how much the necklace was really worth.  This would have saved them so much time and money.  

The next quote is "Swallow up your greed" (Linkin Park).  This is a response from the husband to her constant greediness.  When the wife gets a taste of the style of the upper class with the dress her husband got, she begins to want more.  She becomes desperate for accessories to look pretty which is a sign of greed. The most outstanding quote of her greed was "It annoys me not to have a single jewel, not a single stone, nothing to pit on.  I shall look like distress.  I should almost rather not go at all."  Instead of being thankful for what she has and what her husband got her, she let greed take her over and it ended up destroying her life. The last part to this quote is "Suffer all alone in your misery" (Linkin Park).  This can be interpreted as him getting to his breaking point and leaving her.  Her constant lying, greediness and being ungrateful might be getting to be too much for her husband.  Therefor this quote from the song could be a great way to be compared with the story.  It is setting up a whole other part of the story where we see how he feels about the whole situation and he leaves her.

These next quotes in the song were repeated a few times over and over again "You did it to yourself, You did it to yourself" (Linkin Park).   This pattern of repeated words have a strong relation to the woman's problems and maybe he had to repeat himself to get it through her head to relax and just be yourself.  After the feeling of being pretty and popular at the ball, she "danced with intoxication, with passion, made drunk by pleasure, forgetting all, in at the triumph of her beauty in the glory of her success in a sort of a cloud of happiness composed of all of this homage, of all this admiration, of all these awakened desires, and of that the sense of complete victory which is so sweet to a woman's heart." This also relates to the way she constantly is asking for more and more accessories.  Her repeating pattern of obsession is ruining her and her husband's life.  The song is telling how the husband feels about her situation with having very little money and no job.  He is saying how she did this to herself by not working hard enough in her younger years.  She is so desperate that she relies on other people lending her accessories to use for a night.  If she would have worked earlier in life as hard as she did to repay the loan to buy a new necklace, she would have everything she wanted and needed without a problem.  All success requires hard work and determination.

This whole story has many lessons in it and some can still be valuable today for people.  Even today, some girls do everything they can to fit in and look as pretty as possible.  They also get obsessed and sometimes greedy just like the woman in "The Necklace".  They can learn a lot from the story and the song's conversation with each other if they listen closely and understand what the meaning of the conversation is.  Lies, greed, and ungratefulness can cause problems in your life and you may lose loved ones over it.  Another lesson to learn from the song and story is that hard work and dedication can get you far in life.  Being lazy in your younger years in life is a huge mistake.  No one wants to work extra hard when they are old, instead they want to retire and relax. There is also a way to relate this to the husband's perspective.  The way the husband provides as much as he can for his wife is amazing.  

Unfortunately, some people do not appreciate others like that and is never satisfied.  This can lead to someone thinking that they are not doing a well enough job providing for their significant other.  Linkin Park's song has the man angry and upset with his wife.  What if maybe he is that problem?  The situation with his wife could have possibly been avoided if he stayed strong and did not buy her that dress with his hard earned money.  It could be a possibility that maybe the husband is only just angry at himself for giving into her emotions.

Overall, the song "Lies, Greed, and Misery" and the book "The Necklace" go very well together in a conversation.  No matter what situation is in "The Necklace", "Lies Greed and Misery" has some sort of response.  With all of the lessons that can be learned from comparison of the two works, knowing when to tell the truth and own up to it probably the most important.  Every problem could have gone away if she would have just told her friend she lost the necklace.  "The Necklace" and Linkin Park's song go together so well that it is like the song is in a response to the story.  "The Necklace" gives a story all about this woman and focuses on her about the rough times through greed and desperation.  "Lies, Greed, and Misery" (Linkin Park) give a whole other story through the man's perspective of her situation.  This is important in order for the audience so there is no confusion or gaps in the ending.

