The Necklace is a short story written by Guy de Maupassant which has the story of a woman who ruined her life because of her aspirations of appearing to be wealthy while on the inside she was only married to a clerk and did not have much money. The characterization of people and events in the final dialogue at the end of The Necklace shows that people may not always be who they say they are and the perceptions of some people may be skewed as a result of the false outward appearance expressed by the original person. 

In this short story, Mathilde Loisel, the main female character, is married to a hardworking husband that would sacrifice anything for her. From the beginning of the text, Mathilde was greedy and unhappy with her lower status of wealth. When her husband worked hard to acquire a ticket to a lavish ball, Mathilde complained of her limited wardrobe and jewelry. The husband generously let Mathilde buy a new dress and gave her the idea to borrow nice jewelry from Mme. Forestier, who was a friend of Mathildes. Mathilde borrowed a necklace from Mme. Forestier and lost it at the ball. In order to maintain her pride, Mathilde replaced the seemingly very expensive necklace without any suspicion from Mme. Forestier. For the following ten years, Mathilde and her husband had to work very hard in order to repay their loans that they took out for the necklace. In a conversation with Mme. Forestier ten years after the incident, it is admitted that the necklace was not real diamonds and was not nearly worth as much as the replacement necklace was. After all of their hard work in the ten years after the incident, Mathilde and her husband had worked for something that was not even real. The events in the story show a lot about the characters and who they really are as people in society. 

The specific passage that truly reveals the overall message of the text is the dialogue in the end between Mathilde Loisel and Mme. Forestier. This conversation takes place on a Sunday in a park ten years after Mme. Forestier lent Mathilde the necklace for the ministerial ball that she attended with her husband. This passage plays an important role in ending the story and portraying a message to the audience because of the "plot twist" that occurs. The main event in the passage is when Mathilde explains her story of her difficult struggle to replace the lost necklace but then Mme. Forestier tells her that the necklace was paste and worth only five hundred francs. This exchange completely changes whatever the reader thought about the story because all of the work that Mathilde and her husband had done in the past ten years was worthless and they should have just been honest. This would have saved them from their troubled life after the ball. When looking at specific characters, the passage shows a lot about Mathilde Loisel and Mme. Forestier. Before the ball, Mathilde had been upset with her life and aspired to be as wealthy and luxurious as the woman she looked up to. Almost all of her focus was on becoming like those seemingly royal women, such as Mme. Forestier. With the little pride that she had at the time, Mathilde refused to admit to Mme. Forestier that she lost the necklace because Mme. Forestier gave of the impression that she was wealthy and had a plethora of expensive jewels and a lavish lifestyle. This secret resulted in the next ten years being terribly difficult and draining. In the passage when Mathilde finally comes clean about her past and the necklace, this shows that she has come to terms with her mistake and she was okay when telling that she lost the necklace to the original owner.  Mathilde expressed this feeling when she said, "At last it is ended, and I am very glad." Mathilde seemed to be almost proud of her hard work in the past ten years because although it was tiring, she was able to pay all of the loans back and be involved in the process along with her husband whom also worked very long hours to pay off the loans. Since the final words of the passage were of Mme. Forestier telling that the necklace did not have real diamonds, Mathilde's reaction to this was not explained. It can be assumed though after reading the entire text that Mathilde realized that she should have been truthful and it would have saved her from her changed lifestyle in the past ten years. The plot twist of Mathilde finding out the diamonds were not real in the original necklace shows a lot about the character of Mme. Forestier. When Mme. Forestier was first introduced, she was given the description of being very wealthy. Her admittance showed that her outward appearance was not true and she was not as wealthy and elegant as people perceived her to be. Mme. Forestier must have thought it was important to appear wealthy just like Mathilde strived to appear to be. The appearance of Forestier changed from being very wealthy to being a "fake." Also, when Mme. Forestier told Mathilde that the diamonds were not real, her language was in a way condescending towards Mathilde. Mme. Forestier "smiled with a joy which was proud and naive at once," which shows that she thought it was somewhat funny that Mathilde was deceived by the genuineness of the necklace. Mathilde and Mme. Forestier both had details revealed about them in the passage that changed the meaning of the whole text. The husband of Mathilde was left out of the passage and conversation between the two women as a way to put more of a focus on the two main characters. Throughout the text, the husband was often in the background and was not to blame for the loss of the necklace, but it was odd that he was left out of the interaction. The husband played a large role in helping repay for the necklace and was always ready to do anything for Mathilde since she was not as hard of a worker as he was. His reaction to the plot twist is up to the reader's interpretation since he was left out of the passage where this was revealed.  

The author of The Necklace used the final dialogue between Mathilde Loisel and Mme. Forestier to expose the truth about the characters and the necklace. Also, the language used shows the transformation of the characters and the plot. The dialogue completes the short story and it illustrates the general theme that people may not always be who they appear to be. 

