Mankind’s Obsession with Money in The Queen of Spades and The Necklace

Money

The two stories “The Queen of Spades” and “The necklace” talks about human obsession with money. The queen of spade story opens up by criticizing the game of cards among the group of junior army officers. This criticism is based on the past lesson of Tomsky grandmother who lost great fortune years earlier while playing cards. According to Pushkin (1834), there are similarities between the younger and older generation when it comes obsession with money. Humans do risks what they have in the quest to become rich within a shorter time. This obsession with money has lifetime consequences. On the other hand, the necklace story narrates a story of a young woman, Mathilde Loisel, who was obsessed with wealth (1884). She had a dream of marrying a rich person but in the end she ended up marrying a copyist, who was not considered rich by those days’ standards. Mathilde failure to satisfy her obsession with wealth subjected her to a traumatic life (Maupassant, 1884).

There are lessons that we can learn from these two stories. In the queen of spade, the lesson we can learn is that humans are never satisfied with the wealth that they already have. They are willing to risk their fortunes in order to gain more wealth. Furthermore, we learn a lesson that there are things that should be valued in life rather than money which are peace and independence (Pushkin, 1834). Therefore, humans must be contented with what they have already rather than struggling to achieve things which are nearly impossible. In the Necklace story, the lesson we learn is that we should stay focused on our current lives rather than the being obsessed about the future which can be unpredictable. In addition, not all things in life go well as expected, especially when it comes to the matters of relationship and wealth.

These stories have similar lessons. The game of cards is similar to our lives. Life is a gamble because it can never be predicted on how it would end. Just like gambling, you can never predict on whether you would succeed or not. Therefore, instead of focusing about the next move, it is important to concentrate on what you already have and the issues at hand. Both stories highlight the consequences of human obsession with money or wealth.