Lecture
2
The Need to Belong: How Far Will You Go?
(Outside reading for lecture)
“The Necklace,” Maupassant
www.bartleby.com/195/20.html
Only gods and beasts live alone,
wrote Aristotle in his Politics. Man was made for the
city. By “city” I take him to mean any community of
people. In other words, we need others to live a good life. Friendships
have often been considered as one of the crowning goods we can
possess. That it is natural to man is evidenced by the fact that
we are not taught to “have friends” like we are taught
the alphabet. It is a deeply imbedded need, and to live without
the possibility of having close friends leads to despair.
I recently had the opportunity to tutor a young 15 year old student
from Indonesia. But to say he was from Indonesia is not quite
accurate. For the first time since he was five, he was staying
more than one year in a school. He had been moving to a new school,
trying to make new friends, moving away and trying to adjust to
a new school every single year. To report that he was slow to
speak, that he had no friends, even in his second year would be
too obvious. To say that he did not do well in school ought not
to come as a surprise either. And yet his state at the time I
met him is not unlike many others of this generation.
Isolation, the lack of any profound connection with other humans,
seems to be the disease of our day. Given our mobility, the greater
tendency to live in the atomic family unit, the isolating pastimes
of watching television, or working on the computer, it is no wonder
that people seek each other out on the internet chat rooms in
ever increasing numbers. A virtual friend is better than no friend.
But virtual friendships are just one modern day instrument for
overcoming isolation. Another means we develop at a young age
to overcome our isolation is the capacity to change who we are
in order to connect with a group. I have been watching students
for 20 years on two continents and have seen the same play enacted
over and over again. The new person comes to school and for the
first day or two is fundamentally isolated from everyone. If she
moved from another city or another country her clothes are not
quite right. Her hair is not cut in a way that is recognized as
ok. At the break between the classes she can be seen walking slowly,
because there is no place in particular she needs to go. After
all, there is no one to meet. At lunch, she tries to find a place
where the others her age are sitting, but she does not know which
group is most like her in attitude, character, and personality.
Then someone talks to her and she feels immediate relief, even
if the person is not quite like her. So strong is her need to
be connected, to overcome her isolation, that she does not care
what the person is like. By the third or fourth day she recognizes
which group is going to shun her, which group will accept her,
and which group she does not want to be associated with for fear
of being outcast by the other groups she sees. She has arrived.
The following week, if she can afford it, she will shop for the
right clothes, and maybe even get her haircut.
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What all the studies show is that she will go to great lengths
not to stick out, not to be noticed as the “new” girl.
You will find her laughing with a little too much enthusiasm,
pretending to understand the inside jokes. If they smoke, she
may even try that if she has not before. If they are cruel to
others, she will be inclined to follow along in the mean spirited
conversation, for no other reason than that she must seem to belong.
Whatever she was before, she is not that now, at least not on
the surface, and what brought about these changes in just a few
weeks? The overwhelming need to belong.
Of course, there is an ethical dimension to these changes. How
far will one go to fit in? Will she lie? Will she cheat? Will
she help someone else in her group to cheat on her work? There
is very strong evidence to suggest that she will, and the more
vulnerable she feels, the more potentially isolated she feels,
the more difficult it will be to maintain her character.
Maupassant portrays this very common dilemma in his short story
“The Necklace” and situates this ethical dilemma in
the character of Mathilde. What is interesting about the story
is not the sense of predictability; some of you were probably
able to guess the outcome. What is incredible is the psychological
accuracy with which Maupassant depicts the drama in the soul of
the main character. We can feel the sense of disappointment, and
we have felt that. Maupassant lets us climb into the imagination
of this woman, who believes that she deserves so much more than
she got from life. But what is it that leads her and not her husband
to such an impasse? What human faculty takes her by the hand and
leads her to this terrible place in the end? What is the nature
of temptation? Here, it is clear that Maupassant wants us to sympathize
with Mathilde. Do you? If so, why? What about her character leads
you to this position? If you do not, why not?
There is a mystery in right and wrong. And here, Maupassant reveals
quite clearly the nature of that mystery.
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