Imagery as Irony
Perhaps above all other literary techniques, de Maupassant is associated with irony. Primarily because his most well-known story, “The Necklace,” has a Twilight Zone-like twist ending. Many of his stories end on a similar note of inversion, but the twist is not the only means by which de Maupassant uses irony. “The Donkey” opens with imagery suggesting beauty, serenity and a kind eerie quiet that seems to suggest what it is come is really just about any other kind of story aside from what it turns out to be: a tale of two especially repellent and sadistic men.
“There was not a breath of air stirring; a heavy mist was lying over the river. It was like a layer of cotton placed on the water. The banks themselves were indistinct, hidden behind strange fogs. But day was breaking and the hill was becoming visible. In the dawning light of day the plaster houses began to appear like white spots. Cocks were crowing in the barnyard.”
The Mysterious Invisible
A mysterious invisible force invading a character is a motif which recurs through a number of the stories of de Maupassant. It is a force given a name in “The Horla.” The problem or the author becomes how to describe what is invisible and he masterfully addresses the inherent paradox of this situation by using imagery to describe how such a force confuses normal sensory mechanics:
“How profound that mystery of the Invisible is! We cannot fathom it with our miserable senses…They are fairies who work the miracle of changing that movement into noise, and by that metamorphosis give birth to music, which makes the mute agitation of nature musical…with our sense of smell which is smaller than that of a dog ... with our sense of taste which can scarcely distinguish the age of a wine!”
Insanity
The narrator of “Madame Hermet” opens with a confession that he harbors a deep and profound fascination with “crazy people.” Shortly thereafter he proceeds to provide reasoning behind this captivation with imagery which delineates the state of insanity that is refreshingly positive:
“For them there is no such thing as the impossible, nothing is improbable; fairyland is a constant quantity and the supernatural quite familiar. The old rampart, logic; the old wall, reason; the old main stay of thought, good sense, break down, fall and crumble before their imagination, set free and escaped into the limitless realm of fancy, and advancing with fabulous bounds, and nothing can check it. For them everything happens, and anything may happen.”
“The Mustache”
Jeanne, the young woman whose letter to her friend Lucy constitutes the entirety of the story titled “The Mustache” has discovered a horrible secret: it is possible that she could actually stop loving her husband if he refused to grow his mustache back. It’s a crazy story, of course, but her imagery of why, exactly, a mustache is a potential deal-killer, does make it seem at least a little more logical:
“Whence comes this charm of the mustache…It tickles your face…you feel it approaching your mouth and it sends a little shiver through you down to the tips of your toes. And on your neck! Have you ever felt a mustache on your neck? It intoxicates you, makes you feel creepy, goes to the tips of your fingers. You wriggle, shake your shoulders, toss back your head. You wish to get away and at the same time to remain there; it is delightful, but irritating. But how good it is!”
