Pere Goriot By Honore De Balzac

In the novella Pere Goriot, author Honoré De Balzac establishes a high-class Persian society set in Paris. This elite society creates a lot of tension throughout the borders. Living in the hostel, a bond is bounded between the borders and their materialistic possessions. All the borders share a unique connection, which eventually falls apart. De Balzac's characters in Pere Goriot are engaged by their belongings that they treat as a part of themselves. Each border at the hostel lives on a different floor level; further showing physical evidence of their social status in society. Each character in the story has an individualistic struggle. They face difficulties in their bountiful plight to determine their own internal identity in society.

But there is a certain character in the story that influences his work and will lead him to a life of bourgeois mediocrity where he will need money to keep up the lifestyle he always dreamed of. Later on in the story, the character Vautrin is relieved. He is known to be an underground banker working for the mob and an escaped convict towards the end when he gets arrested. Vautrin then tries to carry out a plan in which he tries to convince Eugene to marry Victorine so he could inherit her father’ s riches, but there is a slight problem. They would have to get rid of Victorine’s brother Frederic so that the inheritance could all go to Victorine, making Eugene rich, while Vautrin obtains a substantial amount as well, due to the fact that he is going to carry out the murder. “Vautrin stood up, and went through the motions of a fencing master guarding and lunging.… And out with him!”( Balzac pg 117). Eugene does not expect it at first, but through Vautrin's constant whispers and reminders of it when Eugene does not have money, it makes him think about it but at the end he accepts his illicit liaison with Delphine, Goriot’s daughter, in which Goriot pays for their expenses, eventually rejecting Vautrin’s