Добавил:
Опубликованный материал нарушает ваши авторские права? Сообщите нам.
Вуз: Предмет: Файл:

Analysis - The Happy Man

.docx
Скачиваний:
382
Добавлен:
02.01.2017
Размер:
15.07 Кб
Скачать

The Happy Man is a short story written by a well-known English novelist William Somerset Maugham. His famous works include Of Human Bondage, The Moon and Sixpence, and The Theater. His style of writing is clear and precise, the language is simple and all the words are used only in their direct meaning. His speech is not ornamented, which helps the reader concentrate not on the form, but on the meaning. He always puts a question and leaves it to the reader to answer it.

In the short story under analysis a visit to the narrator is described. The visitor is a doctor who wants to ask whether he should leave for Spain or not, to succeed in his life. The narrator answers that it can be difficult for him, but he should do that. The visitor leaves. Fifteen years later, the narrator goes to Spain where he meets his visitor and hears from him, that his life is really good, though he is not rich.

From the story, we can see that we should not be afraid of risk. The doctor, inspired by the narrator, moves to Spain and becomes a happy man. Nevertheless, there is another idea, too. Maugham puts a question for us: Should we advise people or not? He does not ask the question directly, but we can guess about it from the whole story and especially from the introduction, which is a purely abstract thinking of the author and does not contain any action.

Therefore, we can divide the story into three parts: The Introduction, where the problem of giving advice is stated, The Main Part, where a piece of advice is given, and The Conclusion, where we get to know the consequences of it.

In the first part, we see what the narrator thinks about giving advice. He does not like it, because “each one of us is a prisoner in a solitary tower”, and the signs we communicate with the help of can have different meaning for different people. So, he does not consider himself as a person who is allowed to give advice.

But once he does — that is what the second part is about. A “thick-set and stout” doctor in a “suit good deal the worse for wear”, who seems clumsy and “embarrassed”, comes to him and asks for his advice. He is not happy here, though he earns a lot of money, he wants to Spain, and his wife wants, too. The narrator warns him that it is a great risk, but he still tells him to go to Spain. It may be “short, sharp sentences” that urge him to do that. Or, maybe, the narrator knows that living for himself will be good for the doctor, because he often uses the pronoun ‘I’, which probably means that he loves himself very much. Then the doctor leaves and the narrator forgets about this visit.

The third part tells us about the narrator’s trip to Seville, where he needs an English doctor. He doctor does not take money from him, which is surprising, and then he is told that the doctor is his old acquaintance Dr. Stephens who looks different now — his clothes are “shabby”, though “made by a Spanish tailor”, he is “very fat now and bald”. The narrator compares him to Silenus, a Greek mythological character, the tutor and companion of Dionysus, the God of wine, and calls him the most “delightful creature to drink a glass of wine with”. He radiates jollity and hospitality and seems to be a happy, confident man, even though his wife has left him — now he lives with another, beautiful Spanish woman and enjoys his live. From the third part, we can see how the character changes. The change is, obviously, for the better, so the narrator’s advice helped.

The story is written in a first-person narrative, and the narrator is a doctor, from which we may suggest that the narrator is the author himself, which makes his story more true to life. Maugham uses some stylistic devices, so that his story would be more expressive. As for lexical SD, there are a few metaphors (“a prisoner in a solitary tower”), epithets (“bacchanalian smile”), allusion (reference to Silenus). There is also alliteration (“round red face”, “short, sharp sentences"). He uses some syntactic devices, too: inversion (“The clothes he wore, terribly shabby they were…”, “But this I can tell you…”), ellipsis in dialogues (“Why Spain?”), but mostly he writes complete sentences, which makes his characters’ speech somewhat elevated and tells us that they are well-educated as they are both doctors.

It is interesting that the introduction is different from the rest of the story. When telling his abstract thoughts, Maugham uses a bigger amount of complex sentences and his language is more metaphorical, while the main part is written in his usual plain style, which helps to see the idea without stumbling over the decorations.

So, the question is asked — to advise or not to advise? Maugham gives us an example when the advice helped. But I personally think that all depends on the situation and the people and things involved, and the question cannot be answered so easily. It is up to us whether we would give advice or not, but we must remember that we are responsible for all the consequences.

Соседние файлы в предмете Английский язык