The Bracelet

English 122

Professor Leesch

22 April, 2014

“The Bracelet”

The story is about an older woman called Madame Augelier, and her attempts to once again feel happiness in her marriage and in life. Every year, she received an item that marked both the year’s end and their wedding anniversary. This year she receives a diamond bracelet with twenty-nine stones. She looks at it and just after a while she admits to herself that she is already tired of it. The story goes on and Madame Augelier is described to be craving “a visual pleasure which would involve the sense of taste as well” (Ward 1049). The blue bracelet that Madame Augelier owned when she was young gave her this pleasure, and now she realizes after getting a new blue similar one that she will never experience that feeling again about anything in life, she was getting old.

The claim in the story is that one might have every item in the world that one wishes for but it will still not give one any pleasure or happiness in life.

There is much evidence in the story that can support this claim. The role marriage had back then was different. One married to guarantee that one had it well economically in life. When one is married the items one receives from this person is usually of a special worth. One can tell by the way Madame Augelier is describing her husbands gifts that it was not true love and that they did not mean anything for her. “… Twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine… There really are twenty nine…” (Ward 1046) She is in a mechanical way counting the diamonds on her new bracelet. Twenty-nine years of marriage should be something someone is grateful for and especially receiving a diamond bracelet. This was not the case, Madame Augelier was instead thinking about the blue bracelet she had when she was ten and the pleasure and happiness that gave her.

Furthermore, There are rhetorical appeals in the story that can enhance his claim. Starting of with ethos, one can easily find the author of the...