Mother Savage phase 2

Mother Savage is a short story written by Guy de Maupassant it takes place during the Franco-Prussian war of the 1870s. Mother Savage’s Son volunteered for the war leaving her all alone. Since she was well off and had money when the Prussians came they were billeted with family’s in the village and since Mother Savage had money she was given four Prussians to care for. Guy de Maupassant's "Mother Savage" illustrates the seemingly ambivalent way that people can go from "enemy" to "neutral" to "friend." Ambivalence is a state of having simultaneous, conflicting feelings toward a person or thing. When the four young Prussians arrived they were in conquered territory so naturally they were enemies of the peasants. But the Prussians started helping around the house, cleaning windows, bringing food home they realized she was old and frail and tried to make the situation as best as she could for them. “In short, doing all the chores like four good boys working for their own mother”(78).  She took a bonding to them, and became their “friends” so its surprising the way the story ends “She liked them well enough, too, those four enemies of hers”(78). When the letter arrived informing Mother Savage of her sons death, something inside of her snapped, she realized that the Prussians are not her friends, they killed her son so she sat I thought of revenge. She was taking a liking to the four boys but what do you do when your son was killed by the fellow countrymen of the people you called “friends”. I’m sure she had conflicting feelings about her plan to murder the soldiers but that didn’t stop her, she wanted revenge. She wanted their mothers know how it felt to lose a son. The ambivalence between friend and enemy is a central theme to the story. The Prussian soldiers did everything to make her comfortable and they thought of her as a friend since she was so kind to them and gave no hints of stabbing them in the back. But its nothing they did, when Mother Savage decided they were enemies and slaughtered them.    

The title is foreshadowing in itself “was this their name or nickname”(77) that phrase right there gets you thinking that maybe its not their surname like you would think. How can this sweet old woman be a savage? As the story comes to the end, you understand that Mother Savage is her nickname for what she did for the soldiers. “You can write them how this all happened, and you can tell their parents that I was the one who did it- I, Victoire Simon, The Savage! Never forget it”(82) she made the soldiers think they were safe and even convinced them that putting straw up in the loft with them would make them warmer and they even helped! They helped her in her plan to kill them.

The story also uses the literally device of a flashback to tell the story. When discussing the family that used to live there, “I also recalled that the good woman who lived there had asked me in, one day when I was bone-tired….” (77). It shows that people in the area thought fondly of her and she was a nice old woman that would help a fellow person in need. But everyone has a dark side and all it took for Mother Savage’s to come out was the death of her son.