The story was written by Somerset Maugham - British novelist, playwright, short-story writer, highest paid author in the world in the 1930s. Despite his popularity, Maugham did not gain serious recognition. This was expressed in his autobiography THE SUMMING UP (1938), that he stood ‘in the very first row of the second-raters’. Maugham’s skill in handling plot has been compared by critics in the manner of Guy de Maupassant. In many novels the surroundings are international and the stories are told in clear, economical style with cynical or resigned undertone. Though there are many admirers of his works, I am among them.
In the story under the discussion we can define the style of the author as bookish more than as colloquial, as many words applied by Maugham prove that: affiance, to long, ailment, consent, etc. Although the colloquialisms are also present in the story, such as “dreadfully homesick”, etc.
The genre of the story is a novel, as it describes a love story of a couple never going to be together, it fully correspond the boundaries of this genre.
The subject matter – story about a usual fisherman’s son who returned from military service and found out that his girl refused from his love. He started a new life without her, but the loss hurt him and stayed in his heart forever.
In this story the author voices dissatisfaction with the fact that for most people the things spoken about oneself are more important than a man himself. That causes lots of difficulties and misunderstandings. This is the problem the author arises by his work. And we can easily draw the message of Maugham who hints that the beauty of a man is defined not by his inner characteristics, but by his inner world. This item consistently helps us to formulate the controlling idea of the novel – more than often mankind forgets about morals and inner world of every person and that is much higher than one’s outer features, or in other words – the only valuable quality is much more than many unimportant and unnecessary ones.
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