In the novel The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery, the relationship between the dualistic approach of high culture and low culture is present. Characters such as Renée, Paloma, and Ozu all display their class consciousness; as a result, the notion of wealth and social structure is displayed. Renée and Paloma live in a world of solitude however, when art serves to elude normalcy and pairs with companionship, both of these women change their mindset to create a contented life away from all the hierarchy. The use of both high culture and low culture contribute to the plot by providing a background on main figures in the novel. Renée demonstrates one of the most influential and recurring examples of culture. The concierge must conceal…show more content… Anything that is treated as worthy in society is usually meticulous and superficial to the two main characters. Since the society gets to chose what personality goes with what job, Renée feels as if she is stuck in her image of a concierge. This results in her passion for art and other forms of it to be concealed. When Renée’s husband passed away it goes basically unnoticed. “Since we were concierges, it was given that death, for us, must be a matter of course, whereas for our privileged neighbors it carried all the weight of injustice and drama” 74). The reaction to the death of somebody who was higher on the social scale and lower differs. An example of a man of the lower class and society's reaction to his death was Lucien. “[He] was a nonentity who was merely returning to a nothingness from which he had never emerged” (74). The reaction to his death is close to nothing and that the social structure doesn’t value people of the lower class as much as the higher class. Renée and Paloma want to escape the barrier that society has created. In Paloma’s life, her parents are very busy with their own money and work to really care for her. She is a very smart and gifted child and she realizes that wealth doesn’t equate to happiness or anything worthy. Therefore she decided that she is “going to commit suicide and set the house on fire in…show more content… Originally characters such as Renée and Paloma fix their inner struggles and dilemmas with their escape methods of art, books, rich culture, or music. However, progressing through the novel both characters aid their inner demons using companionship which Ozu has brought upon
