Guy de Maupassant’s “Boule de Suif” is an example of a short story written in the Naturalist tradition. Its omniscient narrator operates at a distance, offering detached and often wry insight into the characters’ motivations. Ultimately, the characters’ actions are a product of their experiences (like class background) and environment (the war). If the resulting picture of human nature is pessimistic, lingering on the characters’ destructive and self-serving behavior, this too is typical of Naturalism, and the bleak description of the defeated French troops retreating from battle, coupled with the images of the cold, snowy weather that blankets the landscape, foreshadows the story’s dark tone.

The narrative centers in large part on The Inescapability of Social Class, with the coach, full of people from all different walks of life, symbolizing French society. Broadly, these characters fall into four groups: the upper and middle classes (the Count and Countess Hubert de Breville, Monsieur and Madame Loiseau, and Monsieur and Madame Carré-Lamadon), representatives of the Church (the nuns), the antimonarchist movement (

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