Paul Gauguin In The Novels Of Maugham And LLOSA

Paul Gauguin is the French Post-Impressionist painter. His life of fleeing to Tahiti for painting aroused the interest of writers. In1919, sixteen years after his death, British writer Somerset Maugham published the novel "The Moon and Sixpence", and Gauguin is as the prototype of the main character,Charles Strickland. In2003, Peru-Spanish writer Vargas Llosa published the "El Paraiso en la otra esquina" for Gauguin and his grandmother’s stories, Gauguin is one of the two main characters. Although the two novels are based on Gauguin’s life and Gauguin is as the prototype of both two main characters, but there are some differences for the two images. This article is based on the differences and makes an intensive study to the novels, analyzing characteristics and differences of the two images, then exploring the reasons for the differences,and realizing thoughts and individualities of the two writers.In Maugham’s novel, Gauguin’s story is simplified and rewritten. The character gives up everything of society bravely, and his painting is simply driven by the desire; In Llosa’s novel, Gauguin’s life is true and written in great detail. As the master of structural realism, Llosa mainly described Gauguin’s life in Tahiti, but his works also interspersed with Gauguin’s previous experience. So his whole life is covered in the half of chapters. And Llosa know of Gauguin’s painting and artistic view highly in deep. he focus on Gauguin’s return of primitive life. The personality of Strickland described by Maugham is very simple, he can become ruthless and selfish extremely, he can abandon everything, and is a mad for art; And the personality of Gauguin in Llosa’s novel is complex. He wandered in the dream and the reality. selected a lifestyle for painting, and he is a multi-faceted image.In addition to analyze the characteristics of the two images, this article compares them and finds the differences mainly in four aspects:the cultural edge and the core of primitive culture, the colonial mentality and anti-colonial tendency, the inhibition and praise of lust, the flat figure and cubic image,. Then find the differences of the two images from three aspects:the time and social background of writers, the experiences and thoughts of writers and their style of writing. As an Englishman, Maugham had the imperial thoughts of the Victorian, but he was alienated from Western society because of his spiritual loneliness at the same time; Llosa was influenced by the history and culture of Latin America. He could be tolerant of other races and culture, he was against the despotism of society, and had the pursuit of democracy and freedom. Maugham had an unhappy marriage, so he disliked women and considered lust as one of the shackles of life; while Llosa got the love and happiness from the women, so he cared for the lives of Latin American women, and regarded lust as the symbol of spiritual liberation. Maugham regards the entertainment and storytelling of novels as important. In order to enhance the legendary of the image in this novel, he simplifies Gauguin’s story; And the materials of Llosa’s works are real stories, so his image is relatively close to the prototype. In this paper, through the analysis of differences for the two images and finding the reasons of it, we know of the different thoughts and writing styles of the two writers which influence the characterization. However, although there are differences in the two images, but there are no changes of Gauguin’s path, and the writers express the same freedom of thought by the images.