Human characters in S.Maugham’s stories

William Somerset Maugham (1874 – 1965), a British novelist, short-story writer and playwright.

Two qualities of Maugham as a writer brought him mastery of the short story: an economical and exact means of fixing the sense of place, often exotic places; and an equally economical skill in realizing the crisis of a story. If you are looking for the deep thoughtfulness in a story or a novel by Maugham you cannot expect to have it underlined for you as such. You must not mistake simplicity for insignificance and must learn to recognize his idea in that envelope of reality in which ideas do actually generate, in incident and in dialogue and in little sequences of cause and effect. You will need to read fairly slowly, pondering somewhat as you go along, and to bear it all in mind for sometime afterward, weighing it against your own experience and ideas and feelings.

W.S.Maugham’s mastership as a short-story writer is universally acknowledged. He himself admitted that he drew his characters from life. His skill in creating vivid and original human characters is combined with beauty and refinement of language and style.

S.Maugham’s rich experience in life, his talent of a master of sharp observation helped him to get insight into human nature. He shows people of various occupations and different social groups. Maugham is impartial to his characters. For him they are neither all good nor all bad. He admits the fact that he cannot bring himself to judge his fellowmen. He writes in “The Summing Up”:”I am content to observe them. My observation has led me to believe that, all in all, there is not so much difference between the good and the bad as the moralists would have us believe … There is not much to choose between men. They are all a hotchpotch of greatness and littleness, of virtue and vice, of nobility and baseness…Selfishness and kindness, idealism and sensuality, vanity, shyness, disinterestedness, courage, laziness, nervousness, obstinacy and diffidence; they can all exist in a single person and form a plausible harmony”. The conflict between human moral values and philistine standards of society, the revolt of an individual against the accepted conventions of society are the themes that have always fascinated S.Maugham.

1. “Mr. Know-All” The story “Mr. Know-All” reveals the extreme distaste the author had for snobbery.

The story “Mr. Know-All” is a first person narrative and the reader must be prepared for a biased presentation of the other character. The title character is presented solely through the mind and eyes of an arrogant English gentleman who engages in extensive analysis of himself and the other character. The narrator is a thorough conformist in every aspect of life. He is prepared to dislike Mr. Kelada even before he knew him “because his name betrays his mixed origin”. The narrator uses periphrasis to state that Mr. Kelada was born somewhere in the British colonies (“under a bluer sky then is generally seen in England”) thus showing his ironic attitude to people of that sort. The author exposes the clash of the nobility with the middle class of which he is critical too.

2. “Flotsam and Jetsam”

The title of the story is metaphoric. It symbolizes the frustration of the Granges’ life, the driving force of which is mistrust animosity and hatred. They are on the outskirts of the world both literally and figuratively. They are like wreckage found floating in the sea of life: good for nothing. They have no hopes for future. They are doomed by the “mysterious and dreadful occurrence” to be “unhappy and yet repellent”.

3. “The Unconquered”

“The Unconquered” is Maugham’s only piece of fiction with the Second World War as a setting. It is a powerful story of a French girl who is raped by a Nazi soldier. He afterwards comes to love her and wishes to marry her, but her fierce hatred for the Germans leads her to drown their child the day it is born.

Дата добавления: 2015-10-29