The Life Paradoxes And Spirit Salvation In Maugham's Fiction

The British writer Somerset Maugham has always been in a controversial situation in literary history, while his works have extensive readers in the world, but to the literary history overlooked. Critics generally considered Maugham is a second-rate writer, because he belittles the serious literary value by simply pandering to the public and the pursuit of circulation and profit. The author believes that Maugham persist in using the "story" of the traditional narrative form creation in his fiction, to attach more importance to "entertainment" and "circumstances" made his novels seeming like "popular literature" on the outside. But its profound and serious nature has to be overlooked, resulting in a misunderstanding to Maugham and his works. And the purpose of this paper is to explore the profound and serious aspect in Maugham's novels, which are mainly reflected in the number of interrelated life paradoxes. I will do the research uniting his real life experience and his main novels text For Maugham such a writer who persisted himself unique creation idea, left his real life experiences to discuss his Fiction is inconceivable. This paper is composed by five parts, apart from the first part of the introduction and conclusion of the final part, the middle of three chapters is the key. The first chapter describes the main novels' unique theme and style, and to analyze its characteristics of the formation of social reasons, cultural reasons and personal reasons; Chapter II made deep analysis to the profound characteristics of Maugham novels contents, Mining in the "deep inside" under the "Popular appearance" in Maugham novels, reveal the many paradoxes of life reflected in his novels, including Body and Soul, the original civilization and modern civilization, the pursuit of art and secular life and then ideals with reality ,as well as the meaning of spirit salvation there. Chapter 3 analyzes the unique art appearance of Maugham novels, that the reflection the paradoxes of life in the form of performance art, and also point out that the limitations of the fiction art as well as his personality.