The Spirit Of The Theory Of Maugham's Lonely Explorer

William Somerset Maugham is one of the controversial writers in the English literary world.Although he can never be considered as the most outstanding writers, he has huge readers in theworld. His novels seldom win recognition of the critics, but their profound implications shouldnot be denied. Just as the writer Morgan said:“In the perspective of the astute observer, a personcan not fail to reveal his inner world, even if the works he creates occasionally.”On the basis of thorough analysis of the text, the author believes that Maugham’s mainnovels Of Human Bondage, The Moon and Sixpence and Blade are writing his own lonely heartsexperience and spiritual exploration more than just telling a story and weaving an ideal. Thosenovels reflect the external and sublimation of Maugham’s thought. What’s more, they are the trueportrayal of human’s universal soul struggle, just meeting the spiritual needs of the readers.The paper intends to give a sort-out of the spiritual explorer’s images in Maugham’s works,using Schopenhauer’s free will philosophy and Freud’s psychoanalytic theory. It will not onlyanalyze the author’s psychological motivations, desire projections and cultural aspirations fromthe external literature, but also dig the aesthetic function and the meaning of the text from theinternal literature, in order to grasp the essence of the author and his works in the two areas.The paper includes three chapters.Chapter one tries to analyze the images---Philip in Of Human Bondage, Strickland in TheMoon and Sixpence and Larry in Blade, indicating that they all belong to the type of spiritualexplorers. In the process of growing up, Philip gradually gets rid of the shackles of religion, loveand physical defects, and finally achieves spiritual freedom. Therefore, he can be considered as astruggler who successfully breaks free of the shackles. Strickland bravely gives up worldlycomfort, and decisively chooses the difficult road of the painting to find truth and freedom. So hecan be considered as a dedicated martyr for art. Larry chooses to explore lonely when he facesconfusion in life and the mystery of death. Finally, he finds the truth of self-improvement inHiduism, which make him a saint crossing the blade.In Chapter two, based on the analysis of the spiritual explorers, Section one summarizesthe common features of those images. They are all in a state of loneliness, and are good atobserving, thinking and acting in their own way. At the same time, they tend to think in aphilosophical way, and yearn for the exotic and the natural world. Section two further analyzesthe reason of the formation of the spiritual explorer from the writers’point of view. Maugham, aBritish writer, was born and growing up in France. He lost his parents in the childhood andsuffered from stuttering, which brought his memory full of trauma. Maugham is a lonely wanderer and a spiritual explorer. His experience determines his pessimism. He naturally acceptsthe philosophy of Schopenhauer’s free will and Spinoza’s Ethics and fully reflects his thoughts inthe images of spiritual explorers. Maugham is fastidious about life. His experiences of being asurgeon makes him become cold and sharp, playing the expertise of noticing human’s weaknessto the extreme.Based on the first two chapters, Chapter three mainly explores the meaning of the images ofthe spiritual explorers. First, the shaping of Philip, Strickland and Larry has given vent to theauthor’s desires and impulses for freedom. Thought they got the extreme attitude toward womenand marrige, but that haven’t affect them emboding the good character and quality of spiritualexplorers such as temperament, brave, persistent and so on. Secondly, this kind of images has astrong resonance with readers, and makes a great influence on a large number of modern writers.