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Andy Hood
Instructor Lee Hobbs
ENGL 121.003
14 March 2007
“The Necklace”, “The Eye of the Beholder”, and The Bear
In reading “The Necklace, “The Eye of the Beholder”, and The Bear, I found that each text features a surprise at the end. Each text made necessary preparation to make it a good surprise. In all three cases, pretty much the entire text up until the end is leading the reader in a specific direction to guide their thoughts. Then at the end of the story, the authors hit you with the unexpected. In both “The Necklace” and “The Eye of the Beholder”, the preparations worked perfectly, and the end surprise was what made me like the story. I was already expecting a surprise before reading The Bear.
I think these surprises at the end of the story are quite necessary. I believe the surprises at the end of the three stories are both surprises and necessary outcomes of the preceding parts. On one hand, a surprise is something that comes unexpected and that holds true in two out of three stories. It would have been true in The Bear had I not read the question before reading the text. On the other hand, I think the surprises are necessary to the preceding parts because it makes the story interesting. If it wasn’t for the surprise, you would know exactly what was going on the whole time which would make these particular stories simple tragedies.

Mr. Hobbs,
The suprise in the short play "The Bear" is one that had a great amount of preporation for. The preporation is this case was not allowing the reader to know what was going to happen or foreshadowing. The preporation was building up the character's personalities in away that the readers begin to predict what was coming next.
I never thought that the ending of the story would be as so. I thought that the creditor was such a crazy, angry man that he would have fought the widow and killed her. I never thought that he would fall in love with her. This is how the author prepared the suprise.
Thanks,
Carlos Gonzalez
ENGL.121.003
Extra Credit Assignment

P. 108 #2

After viewing/reading the works “The Bear”, “The Necklace”, and “Eye of the Beholder” we are held with surprises as a viewer/reader. Much preparation is made in each in order to give the surprise a full effect. In “The Bear” the characters of Mrs. Popov and Smirnov have an absolute hate for each other causing the reader to believe that they would never fall in love, but surprisingly their anger turns into passion. In “The Necklace” the reader expects that this necklace was truly real and expensive, but to the reader’s surprise it is a fake. In “Eye of the Beholder” the viewer believes that the woman under the bandages is so ugly it’s unbearable to the eyes of anyone, but surprisingly she is extremely beautiful. Preparation is key in making these stories as surprising as they are, without the preparation leading to the ultimate surprise the surprise would be nothing.
Yet, as the viewer/reader looks back on the previous events leading to the surprise there are reasons to believe that the surprise really wasn’t all that of a surprise. In “The Bear” Smirnov and Mrs. Popov hate each other so much that they are about to kill on another, but stories don’t end that way. Killing each other would just ruin the story, but for them to fall in love that is just a surprise, but obvious outcome of the story. In “The Necklace” Mrs. Liosel loses a diamond necklace she borrows from her wealthy friend Mrs. Forrestier. Why would someone lend an expensive diamond necklace to someone? If the diamonds were truly real I’m sure the owner wouldn’t lend them to someone even a friend. Due to this question the surprise that the necklace is a fake isn’t much of a surprise after all. In “Eye of the Beholder” the viewer never sees the faces of the others in the show causing the viewer to believe something is not right. This causes the surprise that she is beautiful and everyone else is ugly to not be much of a surprise after all.

Katie Kovac
English 121.003

Mr. Hobbs,

Thanks for the opportunity to do extra credit!

Surprises are everywhere, particularly in literature. They allow the writer a power to ensnare the reader’s interest, forcing them to happily follow the story in order to reach the climax surprise at the end. Authors are able to choose how much or how little preparation they use in setting up the surprise as well as just how much of a shock they want their surprise to be. In looking at Anton Chekhov’s “The Bear”, Mausappant’s “The Necklace” and the Twilight Zone production “Eye of the Beholder”, the reader (or viewer) gets a range of authorial decisions about surprises.
“The Eye of the Beholder” offers quite a bit of preparation while building to the climax. The viewer is introduced to a main character in bandages, as well as her situation (the hospital) and some of the people she interacts with. Her story is slowly unwound, each little bit of interaction she has with the other characters building steadily towards the surprise climax when the bandages fall away and she is revealed to be a beautiful woman. The producer made this steady climb on purpose in order to reveal little bits and pieces of the mystery to the viewer so they could make inferences as to the next occurrence. However, due to this steady flow towards the surprise ending, the ‘surprise’ ending is really not so surprising. Tricky camera angles that miss the doctor’s and nurses’ faces, as well as other subtleties lead the viewer to be suspicious. Thus, when the viewer couples this suspicion with the title of the production, the surprise is expected and needed for the skit to feel complete. The woman needs to be beautiful and the other characters need to be pig-like in appearance. If the ‘surprise’ did not occur, the skit would lack closure and the entire moral basis of the play would be lost.
In likely fashion is Maupassant’s “The Necklace”. Maupassant builds his short story steadily to increase flow. Each event has to occur in order to create the conflict (the losing of the necklace) and thus to procure the necessary ending. Due to our modern culture, the reader expects a moral to be dissected from the story. Though “The Necklace” does not offer bits and pieces to build its mystery, it follows what could be considered to the modern reader the typical moral story fiber. Thus, when we learn at the end that the necklace is fake, the reader barely bats and eyelash. There is no surprise in it for the reader could guesstimate that something was strange about the situation and that the main character has to learn a valuable and necessary lesson (tell the truth) or punishment (all those hard years of work to pay for a ‘fake’ necklace replacement).
Lastly but not least is Chekhov’s “The Bear”. Though out of the three “The Bear” had the least amount of preparation for its surprise ending, its ending was the most shocking. Only a short few pages make up “The Bear” and with the added speed the heated argument between the two characters seems to create, the story rapidly moves towards its climax. There seems to be hardly any preparation before suddenly the woman hating Smirnov is confessing his love for a woman he barely knows. The ending comes as a complete and utter surprise like a punch to the face from a dark hallway. However, unlike “The Eye of the Beholder” and “The Necklace” the ending found in “The Bear” is not necessary to the story. The two people could have gone away still hating each other or perhaps, Smirnov would have gotten his money and left peaceably. The conclusion that Chekhov chooses to write gives a sense of completeness for the reader, but is entirely unnecessary as compared to the expected and needed endings to the two moral tales, “Eye of the Beholder” and “The Necklace”.
Surprises do exist in much of literature as a way to grab the reader’s attention. The author may choose to put a lot of preparation as in “Eye of the Beholder” or “The Necklace” with moral not-very-surprising endings or very little preparation (“The Bear”) with a shocking ending. Until the story is read however, every ending is a surprise.

Erin Knisley
18 March 2007
ENGL 121.003 MWF

The Bear
Question #2 on pg 108

Surprises in stories often happen and usually are built up throughout the story to make a huge surprise at the end. In this case, this story had a lot of preparation for this surprise at the end. The author made you feel that they truly hated each other and it made you think about what could happen with these two people by the end of the story. But, in all reality, if you thought about it you could almost predict what was going to happen. By reading it, I pretty much knew that they were going to show some feelings for each other by the end. There are many symbols throughout the story that you can pin-point that will lead you to the conclusion, which makes some surprises not really as big as you thought they would be.

Take The Necklace for example, all that time you’re thinking that she lost this women’s real diamond necklace and wondering how she is going to come up with the money to pay for a new one. But, at the same time you’re thinking that why wouldn’t she just ask her about the necklace at least to see if it’s worth throwing your whole life away to pay for it. I feel that The Necklace was harder to determine the surprise at the end but, still if you used symbols and clues throughout the story you could come up with some understanding and base your own conclusion on those.

Also, The Twilight Zone, was also another good example because it was opposite of The Bear and The Necklace because you knew that there was going to be some type of surprise at the end but it was hard to tell what if could be because the symbols were so vague. For one, the characters faces were never showed to the end so that built up the surprise. As you’re watching this short film you’re expecting her to be some ugly, inhuman person and she turns out to be normal and as a viewer you are defiantly not expecting this because you could have never known that being inhumane was the norm in this story because there were just not enough clues given. So in some degree the surprises can be really big surprises and in other cases you can predict the surprise before it even occurs.

Lorin Gdula

Dear Lee Hobbs,

The short story, “The Necklace” by Guy de Maupassant, “The Bear”, a play by Anton Chekhov and Rob Serling’s and “The Eye of the Beholder”, a short TV show; all three of these pieces of work have surprises that are noticeable at the end of the story. All do not preparation for their endings, which hold the surprises. For example, in the short story “The Necklace” readers are stunned to find out that the Necklace was only costume jewelry. This was vital for the stories ending, because without it Mathidle would not have learned her lesson on what is truly valuable.
In the play ‘The Bear” by Anton Chekhov the surprise is at the end when we find out that Mrs. Popov falls and Smirnov fall in love. The stories central focus is how sorrowful and lonely Mrs. Popov is since she lost her husband. During the story we meet Smirnov who comes across as angry hateful man that could never love women. While reading I thought that one was going to end up killing the other on the call out. The endings surprise was important because is emphasized on two very different people can fall in love.
Another surprise at the end of the story includes the short film clip, “The Eye of the Beholder”. A woman’s face wrapped in bandages and hopes to become normal looking like the rest of society. We figure the woman must look horrible looking and the events leading up to the unwrapping of the bandages are tense. However, viewers are surprised that the girl is beautiful. However in the society she lived in her looks were deviant and went against the social norms. The surprise ending is important because it helps emphasis that statement that, “Beauty is in the eye of the Beholder”.

In the story "The Bear " I was very shocked to find out that Mrs. Popov stayed in the house grieving for who dead husband who mistreated her What I expected is that this married couple had the perfect marriage , but they did not her husband mistreated her and was unfaithful and she stayed in the house after his death. The eye of the beholder was very ironic as well beause I thought Ms. Taylor was in a normal hosptial and I believe that she looked like a total freak instead it was the exact opposite. Everyone who worked at the hosptial was very ugly and she was very pretty.I was very suprised in both stories.

Professor Hobbs,

Throughout all three of the short stories there is preparatiom throughout the whole story to hear the “punchline” in the end. I feel as though all three of the stories endings didn’t necessarily have surprising outcomes. With “The Necklace” I had a feeling that the diamond couldn’t have been real, although it was a sad ending that she and her husband had worked so long to pay it off. In the “Eye of the Beholder” by not being able to see the woman’s face, the viewer was able to come to some sort of conclusion that her face was either horribly distorted or perfect. In the last story “Bear” the viewers were wondering why they were fighting about what the woman needed to pay, talking about how the man and woman hated each other, and in the end, sharing a kiss and “falling in love” over giving Oats to a Horse in a barn.
In all of these stories, the way the plot had been presented made it easier for the reader to predict the outcome.

Sincerely,
Tina W

Lauren E. Wozniak
ENGL 121
Instructor Lee Hobbs
March 19, 2007

Extra Credit

#2 (A) How much preparation is made for the surprises?

In “The Necklace”, “The Bear”, and finally “The Eye of the Beholder” all of the authors of these plays and short stories made their plot leading up the surprise very interesting and suspenseful. The authors try to get the readers to believe something different from the actual out coming by foreshadowing events that throw you off.

(B) In retrospect, to what degree are the surprises not surprises at all, but rather are necessary outcomes of the preceding parts of the works?

In “The Necklace”, the surprise was that the necklace was not real, but indeed fake. This surprise was necessary for the story, because the irony of the outcome was that Mythilde had to work long and hard ten years to pay off the necklace that she lost. If she had known from the beginning that the necklace was not real she wouldn’t have learned what hard work was. In “The Eye of the Beholder”, the surprise and shock of the movie was that the nurses and doctors and everyone else in that community were deformed and odd looking and that the patient was the only normal looking one, and was not deformed at all. The bandages on her face foreshadowed that something was going to be wrong with her, but to our surprise she was the only normal looking one. In “The Bear”, the surprise of the play was that the widow and the tax collector fell in love. This was shocking to the audience, because the tax collector had intruded in her life and wanted to collect the debts that her late husband owed. This was necessary for the story because it showed Mrs. Popov how to love again after the death of her late husband.

English 121
3/19/07
Professor Hobbs,
Extra credit: Suprises

The stories The Bear, The Necklace, and The Eye of the Beholder all have one thing in common, these stories all have a surprise ending. These stories all build up to the surprise so you sort of see it coming.
At the start of the story The Bear, the woman has locked herself away from the world for months and refuses to go out into the world to meet new people, despite her footman’s efforts to get her to go out. Then suddenly a military man arrives which makes us think that by the end of this story she will probably be hooking up with this guy, but we’re not sure because the story could go in any direction at this point. Later he refuses to leave which adds for more build up to this ending and eventually he says he likes her and then that he loves her. When I got to the end of this I wasn’t surprised at all by the ending because there was enough build up to know how this would end.
In The Necklace I don’t think there was much build up for the surprise ending. Her friend was very rich so we assume that the necklace is real, it didn’t even cross my mind that it was fake at the start. After the necklace is lost the rest of their time is spent working up money to pay their debts off, and the whole time she’s thinking about how she shouldn’t have borrowed that necklace. It’s this looking back on the situation that adds for the only bit of build up, but it’s not much build up at all. This just made the thought pass through my head that it would be pretty ironic if it turned out to be a fake. I don’t think there was enough build up to say the story had to end this way, but I wasn’t surprised by the ending either.
The Eye of the Beholder had the most obvious build up I think, but this was also a movie which makes it easier to pick up on these things. Throughout this whole movie this woman’s face is covered in bandages and all the doctors and nurses talk about how ugly she is, anybody paying attention however would notice that we’re not seeing anybody else’s face either. Also knowing that this is a twilight zone episode lets us know that something is probably wrong with everybody else’s face while the woman might look normal. I wasn’t surprised at all by the ending, even when I first saw this when I was 10 or 11 years old. After all the build up this had it was necessary for the story to end by showing us that the woman looks normal, from our perspective, and everyone else is hideous.

Sincerely,
Jeff Hoover

Jenny Troutman
ENGL 121.003 Humanities Literature
Extra Credit Assisgnment
3/9/07

Dear Mr. Lee Hobbs,

In Maupassant's piece, The Necklace, I do believe there was preparation for the surprise. Mathilde never knew the jewelry that she had borrowed from her friend was costume jewerly. So Mathilde and her husband spent 10 years in debt trying to pay this necklace off so she could return it to her friend and act like she never lost it. Near to the ending when Mathilde return the necklace, her friend just laughed because it was only costume jewelry and there was no need of paying all that money for the expensive necklace that Mathidle and her husband slaved over.

The Bear had some preparation in the story. It was a big surprise to me because I never knew that Smirnov was going to fall in love with Mrs. Popov. As the story goes on, Smirnov irritates Mrs. Popov and he just won't leave her alone and she gets so angry. As Smirnov sees Mrs. Popov's reactions to him, he starts to fall in love but Mrs. Popov denies everything about falling in love with him. She claims hatred but then falls in love with Smirnov.

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~Lee