What is a theme in this story?
a.
Age is just a number.
b.
The joys of youth are fleeting.
c.
Diamonds are a girl’s best friend.
d.
A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
What story?
Diamonds are a girl’s best friend
To determine the theme in this story, you need to analyze the overall message or lesson that the story conveys. Themes can be understood by looking at the central conflict, character development, and key events in the story.
In this case, since you haven't provided the specific story or any details, it's difficult for me to determine the theme directly. However, I can guide you on how to identify the theme in a story.
1. Read the entire story: To understand the theme, you need to have a clear overview of the plot, characters, and events in the story. So, make sure you have read the story thoroughly.
2. Identify key events and conflicts: Pay attention to the important events, conflicts, and turning points in the story. These elements often highlight the underlying theme.
3. Analyze character development: Observe how the characters change and grow throughout the story. Their journey and transformation often provide insight into the theme.
4. Look for repeated symbols or motifs: Symbols or motifs that appear repeatedly in the story can be indicators of the theme. Pay attention to any objects, actions, or ideas that are consistently mentioned.
5. Consider the author's message: Think about the author's intention and message. What do you think they were trying to convey through this story?
Once you have taken these steps, you can analyze the options provided:
a. "Age is just a number": If the story focuses on the idea that age is not a determining factor for success or happiness, this could be a possible theme.
b. "The joys of youth are fleeting": If the story portrays the fleeting nature of youth or the importance of cherishing it, this could be a theme.
c. "Diamonds are a girl’s best friend": This theme would be relevant if the story revolves around the idea of materialism or the value of possessions.
d. "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush": This theme would be fitting if the story emphasizes the importance of appreciating what is already within your grasp rather than taking risks.
Based on the limited information given, I cannot conclusively determine the correct theme from the options provided. However, by carefully analyzing the story and considering the options in light of the story's context, you can arrive at the correct theme.
The Bracelet
by Colette
translated by Matthew Ward
“. . . Twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine . . . There really are twenty-nine . . .”
Madame Augelier mechanically counted and recounted the little pavé1 diamonds. Twenty-nine square brilliants, set in a bracelet, which slithered between her fingers like a cold and supple snake. Very white, not too big, admirably matched to each other—the pretty bijou2 of a connoisseur. She fastened it on her wrist, and shook it, throwing off blue sparks under the electric candles; a hundred tiny rainbows, blazing with color, danced on the white tablecloth. But Madame Augelier was looking more closely instead at the other bracelet, the three finely engraved creases encircling her wrist above the glittering snake.
“Poor François . . . what will he give me next year, if we’re both still here?”
François Augelier, industrialist, was traveling in Algeria at the time, but, present or absent, his gift marked both the year’s end and their wedding anniversary. Twenty-eight jade bowls, last year; twenty-seven old enamel plaques mounted on a belt, the year before . . .
“And the twenty-six little Royal Dresden3 plates . . . And the twenty-four meters of antique Alençon lace4 . . .” With a slight effort of memory Madame Augelier could have gone back as far as four modest silver place settings, as far as three pairs of silk stockings . . .
“We weren’t rich back then. Poor François, he’s always spoiled me so . . .” To herself, secretly, she called him “poor François,” because she believed herself guilty of not loving him enough, underestimating the strength of affectionate habits and abiding fidelity.
Madame Augelier raised her hand, tucked her little finger under, extended her wrist to erase the bracelet of wrinkles, and repeated intently, “It’s so pretty . . . the diamonds are so white . . . I’m so pleased . . .” Then she let her hand fall back down and admitted to herself that she was already tired of her new bracelet.
“But I’m not ungrateful,” she said naively with a sigh. Her weary eyes wandered from the flowered tablecloth to the gleaming window. The smell of some Calville apples in a silver bowl made her feel slightly sick and she left the dining room.
In her boudoir5 she opened the steel case which held her jewels, and adorned her left hand in honor of the new bracelet. Her ring had on it a black onyx band and a blue-tinted brilliant; onto her delicate, pale, and somewhat wrinkled little finger, Madame Augelier slipped a circle of dark sapphires. Her prematurely white hair, which she did not dye, appeared even whiter as she adjusted amid slightly frizzy curls a narrow fillet sprinkled with a dusting of diamonds, which she immediately untied and took off again.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m not feeling all that well. Being fifty is a bore, basically . . . ”
She felt restless, both terribly hungry and sick to her stomach, like a convalescent
whose appetite the fresh air has yet to restore.
“Really, now, is a diamond actually as pretty as all that?”
Madame Augelier craved a visual pleasure which would involve the sense of taste as well; the unexpected sight of a lemon, the unbearable squeaking of the knife cutting it in half, makes the mouth water with desire . . .
“But I don’t want a lemon. Yet this nameless pleasure which escapes me does exist, I know it does, I remember it! Yes, the blue glass bracelet . . .”
A shudder made Madame Augelier’s slack cheeks tighten. A vision, the duration of which she could not measure, granted her, for a second time, a moment lived forty years earlier, that incomparable moment as she looked, enraptured, at the color of the day, the iridescent, distorted image of objects seen through a blue glass bangle, moved around in a circle, which she had just been given. That piece of perhaps Oriental glass, broken a few hours later, had held in it a new universe, shapes not the inventions of dreams, slow, serpentine animals moving in pairs, lamps, rays of light congealed in an atmosphere of indescribable blue . . .
The vision ended and Madame Augelier fell back, bruised, into the present, into reality.
But the next day she began searching, from antique shops to flea markets, from flea markets to crystal shops, for a glass bracelet, a certain color of blue. She put the passion of a collector, the precaution, the dissimulation6 of a lunatic into her search. She ventured into what she called “impossible districts,” left her car at the corner of strange streets, and in the end, for a few centimes, she found a circle of blue glass which she recognized in the darkness, stammered as she paid for it, and carried it away.
In the discreet light of her favorite lamp she set the bracelet on the dark field of an old piece of velvet, leaned forward, and waited for the shock . . . But all she saw was a round piece of bluish glass, the trinket of a child or a savage, hastily made and blistered with bubbles; an object whose color and material her memory and reason recognized; but the powerful and sensual genius who creates and nourishes the marvels of childhood, who gradually weakens, then dies mysteriously within us, did not even stir.
Resigned, Madame Augelier thus came to know how old she really was and measured the infinite plain over which there wandered, beyond her reach, a being detached from her forever, a stranger, turned away from her, rebellious and free even from the bidding of memory: a little ten-year-old girl wearing on her wrist a bracelet of blue glass.