English Literature

RAIN

THE MOON AND SIXPENCE

The author uses the life story of the French artist Paul Gauguin. The main character of the novel, Strickland, is a middle-aged stockbroker who takes up painting, throws over his family, escapes to Tahiti where he dies soon. The author reveals Strickland's independent and unpredictable character. He is indif­ferent to everything except painting. He is concen­trated on his art, though "Strickland made no partic­ular impression on the people who came in contact with him in Tahiti." His pictures "seemed to them absurd", they "couldn't make head or tail of them". Recognition comes to him only after death when "agents came from the dealers in Paris and Berlin to look for any pictures which might still remain on the island" and "offered... thirty thousand francs" for his

picture. The title of the book is a symbol of two different worlds — the world of money quit by Strick­land, and the world of beauty reflected in his pictures.

Maugham travelled a lot. Many of his stories are set in foreign lands, and inspired by his travels to Malaya, Siam, China and other countries. His rich life experi­ence gave the author a solid basis for his writing. He criticized the wrongs of the bourgeois society, but at the same time, like Rudyard Kipling, Maugham pro­claimed the ideology of accepting "things as they are". Maugham thought that it was not in the power of man to alter the world. In his works he compares world to the theatre where human life is staged.

In 1921 his first volume of stories was published under the title "The Trembling of a Leaf" which in­cludes a famous story "Rain". Maugham is a sharp observer of people, and is amused by them, but doesn't want to get closely involved with them. That's why his stories often have a bitter or unexpected ending. In his story "Rain" (or "Miss Thompson") the author stresses the idea that Man can't withstand hardships and all the wrongs of society, that Evil is superior to Man.

The main characters, a missionary Davidson and his wife, manage the mission on a group of islands to the North of Samoa. The islands are widely separated, and Davidson _# frequently has to go long distances by canoe. The fear of personal danger can't stop him in the performance of his duty. His work is "to instil into the natives the sense of sin", because the natives have "no sense of sin at all". He wants to save them: "Yes,

with God's help I'll save them." The Samoans don't see their "wickedness". Davidson has "to make sins out of • what they thought were natural actions. He had to I make it a sin to dance and not to come to church, [...]f for a girl to show her bosom, and a sin for a man not! to wear trousers." Davidson institutes fines. In his I opinion, the only way to make people realize "that an j action is sinful is to punish them if they commit it. j He fines them if they don't come to church, if they dance, if they are improperly dressed. He has a tariff,? and "every sin had to be paid for either in money or work." At the end of the story Davidson himself breaks the moral law and finds a horrible death: "The I doctor saw a group of natives standing round some object at the water edge. [... Then he saw, lying half in the water and half out, a dreadful object, the body | of Davidson. [...] The throat was cut from ear to ear, and in the right hand was still the razor with which the deed was done."

Besides the numerous plays and stories Somerset Maugham wrote his famous novels "The Painted Veil" (1925) and "Cakes and Ale" (1930).

During World War I and World War II the writer was the British agent, and he was best known for his short stories, published in 1928 under the title "Ashenden". Ashenden is a spy who has become very popular as a hero in English fiction, and the character who tells the story has become particularly associated with Somer­set Maugham himself in the minds of the public.

Many of Maugham's stories and novels are staged and well-known all over the world.

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