Suffering is a widespread phenomenon in our world today. It is expressed in various ways, on several categories of people. The most common is the one that refers to the lack of capital. In the short story entitled “La Damnée”, suffering is rooted, intensely, to better act in the affect of sensitive subjects. To then identify the meaning that pivots around this theme at the heart of the work, we resort to the theory of semiotics of discourse and the semiotics of passions developed by Algirdas-Julien Greimas. To achieve this, we ask the following question constituting our problematic: What semiotic reading do we make of the suffering at the center of the work and acting intensely in the passionate life of the subject Niépou? As a hypothesis, suffering constitutes the centerpiece of the work and acts in intensity in the passionate journey of the subject Niépou and whose discourse requires the intervention of a semiotic analysis adapted to this purpose. The objective will then be to highlight the discursive and passionate configurations of the theme of suffering as a factor modulating and modalizing the life of the subject Niépou in the short story. As a result, we were able to identify the meaning of suffering, and especially the link it has with the emotional tensions of the main character in the work.