The modal scission and strategy of the subject to pass it

The question of the modality is at the heart of narrative theories of Greimas. In fact, in the semiotic organization of discourse, the modal values of “want”, “have to”, “know” and “be able” modalise the verbs “to be” and “to do”. In order for the performance to be achieved, the subject must have these four modal values, at the beginning of his narrative path that leads him from “the lack of “to “the liquidation of the lack of”. But the progression of the narrative is often met with a modal scission which involves the absence of “to be able to do” and “to know to do”. In Maupassant’s “Fort comme la mort” the subject is facing the modal scission and it slows down the narrative course of which the final state is defined by the conjunction of the subject with his valuable object, Any. The aim of this article is to show how “to be able to do” which first defined negatively, turns into a positive “to be able to do”.