The story starts and ends with death. Although the death of the widow’s son, Antoine happens before the story starts, it is still much an important part of the beginning. His death is quite tragic because he was stabbed in a quarrel by a man known as Nicholas Ravolati because of gambling. The reason why being killed over gambling makes it so tragic is that no one in this world deserves to die over money no matter how much or how little is owed because after all you can not bring mortal possessions with you into the afterlife and you can. Nicholas Ravolati fled to the island of Sardinia after the stabbing. With Antoine’s death it left the widow, Saverini with no male, family representative which was crucial for the people’s way of life in Corsica. The way people lived in Corsica was ‘an eye for an eye’ this meant that Saverini had to take revenge on her son’s killer. This was hard for her to do as she had no male in her family who could do this for her as well as the fact that she was a feeble old woman who would not be able to face the killer by herself. This shows how completely different are two society’s are because no matter how old, frail or anything else that might be a handicap in seeking revenge the woman is, she still has to find a way of seeking vendetta against Nicholas Ravolati whereas, in our society, we believe in punishment by the law and leave the police to deal with it, rather than take the burden upon ourselves to do what Saverini is set out to do. Saverini found a way to take revenge because her dog, Sémillante was whining because it could not get over the fact that its master was dead. She decided that she would train the dog to ‘tear’ the killer’s neck on command and by doing so fulfilling the revenge she swore to take.
Guy de Maupassant makes the woman look very savage just like how he describes the tiny island of Corsica by saying in the story that to train the dog she had to move it out side and chain it to the kennel to make it more savage. She then had to starve Sémillante and after a couple of days cook some black pudding in front of Sémillante and tie it to a dummy’s neck. Sémillante then learns to get meat from the neck. It took the widow three months to be able to train Sémillante to finally go for the neck on command.
What is the most effective part of the story is so savage which is what makes it effective. He does this by varying sentence length and using very strong words with repetition also all of this is in the last part of his story which briefly is as follows. When finally putting the plan into action widow Saverini starved her dog 2 days prior, got some black pudding, prayed to god, thanked him and dressed as a beggar man, hires a boat to get to Sardinia with Sémillante. Once she got to Sardinia she asked around for Nicholas Ravolati and finally found him working as a joiner (his former profession) in the back of his work shop alone. The widow throws open the door and says ‘Nicholas, Nicholas’ and after he turns round she lets Sémillante’s lead go and says ‘tear him, tear him’ (which is the only dialogue in the story accept from when she promises vendetta to her son at the beginning). The maddened animal flew at his throat. The man flew out his arms and grappled with the brute. From this you can see the savage yet effective imagery Guy de Maupassant is not only trying but putting across to the reader as they read.
So, the story begins and ends with death keeping that theme of it being savage right the way through as well as the theme of the islands Corsica and Sardinia being a ‘wild and dreary prospect’.
You can tell that Guy De Maupassant was a naturalist writer because the whole of his story shows how socio-economic problems affected widow Saverini and the way she dealt with them. Overall what makes this story affective is the fact that Guy de Maupassant manages to create such a savage story of how a widow trains a tamed dog to become wild again to do her bidding on a wild and baron island and show how their lives are affected by the things they encounter from day to day, which just goes to show that anything can affect anyone in many or few different ways.
