Greed is one of those negative virtues in a human that will always be present in all types of societies. In Maupassant's "The little cask", it is seen in both Chicot and Mother Magloire; they both find themselves in a situation where the hunger for money becomes their reason for living (so to speak). Since the beginning, Chicot knows he is tricking this little old lady into his game and vice versa, the old lady also finds a way to profit from this situation. Therefore, Maupassant has created two characters who portray society's constant need for power. And in the end, one (Chicot) has to triumph over the other (Magloire) to reach that power; now the actions taken along the way aren't always positive, as is the case of Chicot. He knows very well that the old lady will not refuse dinner and nevertheless, drinking. Therefore, she represents the weak of the society who give in to the bribes of social injustices.
Overall, I found the story line to be somewhat predictable, I was well aware that Chicot was going to end up getting his way, even when the little old lady tried to alter his plans. Despite this fact, however, I have never read Maupassant but I enjoyed his writing...I didn't think it was a bad story and I felt that it had some influence from realism in the way he was describing his characters and the surrounding areas. If more comes to mind...i'll be sure to blog about it.
I see the realism in this story too, with the description and what not. And I like how you mention that greed is a universal attribute in human beings- it says a lot about our own human nature.
ReplyDeleteHello, I agree with your interpretation of “The little cask”, but I’m not sure if philosophically we can say “negative virtues”. For me virtues are the closest qualities of the divinity, sublimity, purity, beauty and transcendental knowledge. What do you think?
ReplyDeleteAbout the predictable story line again I agree with you, but at the same time that’s another element that makes the short story that interesting, because the “interesting” thing is not the end, but the transformation and the variability of the values of the characters. Well, thanks for your post!
Thank you for the comments to both of you...and i actually agree with u that "virtue" is probably not the right word here, but I can't quite pin point the word i'm looking for to describe the negative aspects of these characters...
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that the events were somehow predictable. And if we have a profund look on it, we'll find out that it reflects the vices and weakness of human nature beacuase we all have weak points and nobody's perfect, right? That's why I disagree with the classiffication of people into good and bad because noone is good all the time nor bad all the time.
ReplyDeleteWhen I started reading your comment I stopped when I got to the word “greed”. The first thing that came to mind was "The Seven Deadly Sins" (!). Tomás de Aquino once wrote that greed was "a sin against God, just as all mortal sins, in as much as man condemns things eternal for the sake of temporal things." Sure, this is from a christian (arguable) perspective, but I thought it was interesting how greed is defined as the pursuit of temporal pleasure, some type of vulgar hedonism. I probably wouldn't say that greed is a virtue but a human weakness that can be turned into a quality (see Chicot for example).
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