While all three main characters lead painful and unfulfilling lives in The Necklace, Eveline and A Soldier’s Story due to character weaknesses, all three of them also exhibit admirable strengths. In The Necklace Mathilde’s biggest character flaw is her covetous, material nature, yet she works hard and repays her friend. In Eveline, Eveline is filled with fear and guilt induced in others, but she unselfishly devotes her life to her family. In A Soldier’s Home, Harold Krebs cannot break away from the beliefs of his youth, but he does have the courage to challenge them in himself and others. Therefore, all three characters demonstrate harmful weaknesses and admirable strengths.
In The Necklace, Mathilde is unappreciative. She has a loving and devoted husband and a home for herself, but she desires the wealthy existences of her friends. Because of this she ruins her life by borrowing a diamond necklace from a friend because of her vanity and pride. When she loses the necklace she and her husband become even more impoverished and suffer greater hardships than before. However, we see Mathilde’s true strengths here because she works tirelessly with no reward to pay back her friend. Despite her life being terribly difficult Mathilde pays for another necklace, “You can understand it was not easy for us. At last it is ended, and I am very glad” (38).
Eveline is tortured by fear and guilt over leaving behind everything she has ever known. What she has mostly known is a life of hard work with little reward and lots of abuse. Despite this, instead of running off with the man she might find true love and happiness with, Eveline is selfless. She could go off with the sailor from Buenos Aires and “people would treat her with respect then” (1). Despite this opportunity, Eveline remains loyal to her promise to her dying mother and abandons the sailor to remain home and take care o
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