The author doesn’t give the reader much information about the details of the son’s killing. This is because the story is focussed on the mother promising her son’s dead body a vendetta and how she actually carries it out. Maupassant only concentrates on the description of the bloodied corpse and how the mother reacts to it because he doesn’t want to distract the reader from feeling empathy towards the mother and imagining themselves in her position. The sight of her son’s lifeless, broken corpse is a catalyst that starts a chain reaction of thoughts that lead her to seek revenge. This is because the widow’s life revolved around her son as he was the only family she had after her husband died and her reason for living has been replaced by the vendetta.
The author uses sound to build a suitable atmosphere of sadness and despair. For example, he says that the dog gave a ‘long, drawn-out wail, heart-rending and terrible’. In literary tradition, howling is very conventional in horror novels as it signifies evil and danger. In the context of this story, it prepares the reader for an unnerving read. Another possible reason for the author to emphasise the howling could be that the dog is shown to vocalise his feeling of loss whereas the mother remains silent and focuses all her internal pain on the vendetta.
Maupassant portrays the mother in a such a way that the reader automatically sides with her, regardless of the fact that, as humans, we are taught that two wrongs don’t make a right. This is a very clever thing to do as it engages the reader to experience an emotional response mirroring the widow’s. This makes us feel sorry for her loss and understand her deliberation and final decision to carry out the vendetta, even though it goes against all moral and religious guidelines. The reason the author shows her as going to church is to impress on the reader that she isn’t as cold and ruthless as she seems from the text. This strengthens the connection between reader and character.
The description of the training of Semillante reads like an instruction manual because this is how the widow copes, distancing herself from the violence of the act. The training is merely a means to an end and, therefore, doesn’t require any emotions to complete and this also distracts her from feeling pain at the loss of her child. This method of description allows the reader to imagine their own version of the scene during the training which would vary from reader to reader, depending on how sympathetic they feel towards the widow or the dog.
Maupassant anthropomorphizes the dummy by using words like “tear him”, throat and shoulders and describing it as the prey. This lets the reader imagine the dummy as a real person and not an inanimate object. The widow wanted to make sure Semillante would successfully ‘kill’ the dummy before attempting the real thing as she would only get one chance to actually kill Nicolas Ravolati. Also, doing a realistic dummy run would allow her to test herself to see if the emotional and moral impact of the vendetta would prevent her from going through with it.
One possible reason for Maupassant writing that the widow visited church again is that this would be the last time she could pray for forgiveness before she committed a cardinal sin. This conveys to the reader that despite a cold and harsh exterior, the widow still has faith and believes that God will understand and forgive her. The description of her preparing and carrying out the actual vendetta up to the point of the murder is similar to the way Maupassant describes the training of Semillante as in the widow is emotionally detached from the situation. She is acting methodically to achieve her goal. She only has one chance and if her plan goes awry she could be killed or imprisoned and then she would have broken the promise she made her son.
Maupassant only hints at the widow’s feelings because he didn’t want the reader to get the impression that she took pleasure from the sight of Ravolati’s horrific death. That could potentially have removed any compassion felt by the reader for her. The last line ‘that night, she slept well’ describes her emotional state as relieved that the whole ordeal is over and comforted by the fact that she has fulfilled the final promise she made to her son.
In conclusion, I feel that Maupassant succeeded in challenging the reader to empathise with the widow Saverini, despite their own moral and social reservations. He did this by understating the emotional side of the events that took place and by allowing the reader to imagine their own emotions if they were in the same circumstances. This forces them to experience the same moral and social dilemmas that the widow went through. Personally, I understand the widow’s motives because it’s possible that I would do the same thing in the same situation, even though I’ve been brought up to believe that taking a life is wrong.