Question

What is the main theme of the excerpt?

Read this excerpt from Guy de Maupassant's "Mother Savage" about an old woman who takes in four Prussian soldiers while her si
fighting in the French army:
But the old woman thought always of her own son, so tall and thin, with his hooked nose and his brown eyes and his heavy mu
made a roll of black hair upon his lip. She asked every day of each of the soldiers who were installed beside her hearth: "Do yo
French marching regiment, No. 23, was sent? My boy is in it."
They invariably answered, "No, we don't know, don't know a thing at all." And, understanding her pain and her uneasiness—the
mothers, too, there at home-they rendered her a thousand little services. She loved them well, moreover, her four enemies, si
peasantry have no patriotic hatred; that belongs to the upper class alone. The humble, those who pay the most because they a
because every new burden crushes them down, those who are killed in masses, who make the true cannon's prey because the
those, in fine, who suffer most cruelly the atrocious miseries of war because they are the feeblest and offer least resistance-th
understand at all those bellicose ardors, that excitable sense of honor or those pretended political combinations which in six mo
nations, the conqueror with the conquered.
A.
A mother's love has no barriers
B.
In war, there are no winners

Answer 1

The correct option is D.

Step-by-step explanation:

The options attached to this question are as follows:

A. Mother's love has no barrier.

B. In war, there is no winners.

C. The common man is not patriotic.

D. The poor suffer the most in war.

The main theme of the excerpt given in this question is that the poor suffer the most in war.

The passage talks about a poor mother, whose son was part of the youths, who were drafted for war. Based on the love she has for her son, she made it a point of duty to always cater for soldiers, who came her way and she never lose an opportunity to ask them if they have come across her son.

In the passage, the author writes about the pains that the poor, such as this mother pass through during wars. The poor are the ones who are crushed down continuously with new burdens, they are killed en-mass during the war, they experienced severe war miseries and they pay the most for wars.

Thus, the given excerpt used the poor mother to emphasize the suffering that the poor experience during wars.