The Moon and Sixpence: Somerset Maughan

In The Moon and Sixpence, Charles Strickland, an English stockbroker, leaves his wife and child behind to become a painter in Paris. The story was first published by Heinemann in the UK in 1919. It is based on the life of the French painter Paul Gauguin. It is told in short episodes from the first-person point of view. The story starts with Strickland leaving for Paris. The narrator met Strickland at one of his wife’s literary parties. Strickland’s new life is very different from what he did in London. He used to be a wealthy banker who lived a comfortable life. Now, he has to sleep in cheap hotels and is sick and hungry.

In 1904, Maugham spent a year in Paris. It was there that he first heard the story of Gauguin, a banker who gave up his family and job to follow his passion for art. He heard the story from people who had worked with Gauguin and knew him. Ten years later, Maugham went to Tahiti and met people who had known Gauguin when he lived there. He wrote The Moon and Sixpence after hearing stories that moved him. The story is made up, but it is based on the life of Paul Gauguin.

Theme of the novel The Moon and Sixpence

This study is about analysing a piece of writing. The author breaks down the main idea of William Somerset Maugham’s The Moon and Sixpence. She looks at three parts of the book: the characters, the plot, and the setting. She uses Maslow’s theory of “stratified needs” to look at the main character of the book from a psychological point of view. When the writer looks at the main character, she breaks her analysis into two parts. First, it talks about who Strickland is as a family man, an amateur painter in Paris, and a painter in Tahiti. Second is about Strickland’s life in the states where he needs to be himself. She also tells us about some other people who are connected to the main character. In order to find the theme through the plot, the writer first describes all the characters in the book. Then, she looks at the conflict between the main character and some other characters. After that, she looks at the conflict’s suspense, climax, and ending. The writer looks at the setting after looking at the plot. She looks at the places and things where some important things happen. At last, she talks about the story’s main idea. As a result of the analysis, the writer comes to the conclusion that the main character, Strickland, is a self-actualization man who wants to do something well just because he wants to do it well. By looking at the main character, the plot, and the setting, she figures out that the theme of the book is that a man’s desire to follow his dream or destiny can make him do anything.

Meaning of The Moon and Sixpence

Some sources say that the title comes from a review of Maugham’s novel Of Human Bondage, in which the main character, Philip Carey, is said to be “so busy yearning for the moon that he never saw the sixpence at his feet.” The meaning of the title is not made clear in the book. “If you look on the ground for a sixpence, you don’t look up, and so you miss the moon,” wrote Maugham in a letter from 1956. Maugham’s title sounds like what Gauguin’s biographer at the time, Meier-Graefe, said about him: “He may be charged with always wanting something else.”

The Moon and Sixpence character analysis

Charles Moon and Sixpence, The Strickland, an English stockbroker who leaves his wife and family to study painting in Paris. A buddy sent by the wife to convince him to return learns he’s departed forever. He neglects his health to paint. During sickness, he makes a friend’s wife his mistress and model. Strickland travels from Marseilles to Tahiti following her death. His wife, Ata, cares for him, and he paints continuously. Again ill, he’s diagnosed with leprosy and separated from everyone save Ata. He blinds himself painting their cottage. In darkness, he remembers his last masterpieces but requests Ata to delete them after his death.

Amy Strickland, an English wife and mother. She doesn’t understand why her spouse abandoned her and his popularity.

Strickland’s Parisian buddy Dirk Stroeve. He feels inferior to his English wife, yet he loves her. He demands she nurse Strickland. Dirk leaves his lovers in his studio and offers his unfaithful wife money. When she dies, he goes to the studio and sees her naked portrait, which he attempts to destroy but can’t because it’s a magnificent Strickland work. Dirk lives in Holland with his mother.

Dirk’s wife Blanche Stroeve. When Strickland gets sick, she begs her husband not to have her nurse him. She complies with Dirk’s request. Dirk wants Strickland to go once he recovers and takes over the studio, but Blanche loves him and says she’ll leave too. Strickland views her as a model. He leaves her after completing a failed picture of her. Blanche overdoses.

Tahitian wife Ata. She’s 17 when she marries him and lovingly cares for him. After his death, she ruins their painted home.

Capitaine Brunot admires Ata’s house for Strickland. Brunot saves photographs to give to his daughters as a “dot.”

Dr. Coutras tells Strickland he has leprosy. Strickland gives the doctor a painting. Dr. Coutras is the only Westerner who notices the bizarre drawings on Strickland’s walls after a year of blindness.

Somerset Maugham: A Guide. O&B, Edinburgh, 1963. In a chapter on The Moon and Sixpence, brilliance is analysed. Maugham’s comic talent limited his career, it says. Somerset Maugham Burt. 1985 Twayne This easy-to-read book offers a critical overview and biography. Considers Moon and Sixpence a key Maugham book. Somerset Maugham: A Biography and Critical Analysis. 1969 IU Press. Emphasizes personal and autobiographical aspects in the work and Maugham’s previous fiction. Curtis and Whitehead edited. The Critical Maugham. 1987 Routledge and Kegan Paul. Early Maugham reviews. Includes three early Moon and Sixpence reviews. Somerset Maugham’s Loss. 1987 Frederick Ungar. A half-chapter study of The Moon and Sixpence’s main characters.

Conclusion

The narrative continues in Tahiti after the Paris event. Strickland has already died, and the narrator reconstructs his life there through the stories of others. He discovers that Strickland had married a native lady, had two children with her (one of whom died), and began painting excessively. Strickland spent a short time at the French port of Marseilles before heading to Tahiti, where he resided for a few years until succumbing to leprosy. Strickland left a plethora of paintings behind him, but his greatest masterpiece, which he painted on the walls of his hut before losing his sight to leprosy, was burned by his wife after his death, per his final requests.