Loneliness Caused by Disharmony :

An Analysis of The Moon and Sixpence from Ecologism

仲巧巧

The Moon and Sixpence is a novel written by William Somerset Maugham, a British novelist and dramatist whose status in literature world never caught up with the first raters, but that does not weaken his popularity all over the world. This thesis find the important meaning of human nature through analyzing the works from the ecological perspective. It reveals the loneliness of the spiritual explore in this story and also its writer.

Introduction:This thesis is meant to analyze The Moon and Sixpence from a view of eco-criticism and explore Maugham ’s ecological views by probing into the relationships among man,woman and nature in modern society represented in this novel.They concern human-nature relations, woman-man relations. In sum, these relations together clarify a harmony principle of the novel:human must learn to co-exist more harmoniously with nature, must limit their exploitation of nature and must stop destroying nature by wars and pollution. As previously noted, only by eo-existing harmoniously with nature, can humans live a happy, prosperous and civilized life, and can they expect humanity to survive ever lastingly.

1    Disharmony Between Human and Nature

1.1     Strickland VS London , Paris VS Marseilles

In the story, Strickland’s spiritual exploring experienced four places including London, Paris, Marseilles and Tahiti. All the first three places are big cities which are full of mechanism.The shining neon, the bustling theater, etc. are all the symbols of civilization and development. People live there focus on the social life, enjoying the benefit brought by this kind of life. While this is definitely not suitable for Strickland who entertain great artistic dream. Living in these places only made him sick for its decadence and corruption. Therefore, he spare no efforts to escape these places.

1.2     Strickland VS Tahiti

As the final destination of the “Journey to the Moon”, Tahiti seems to the most ideal place for Strickland to realize his dream.. In this thrilling place, Strickland fond his real freedom and accomplished his greatest work in his life. Living there ,he cared only his work and forgot and was forgotten in the world. All these evidences prove that Strickland loved this place and lived a happy life here. His request to burn his last masterpiece ,however betrayed him. He was worried that his achievement of spiritual exploring would be ruined by the modern society. Therefore, at last he still can not live a life harmoniously with the nature.  

2    Conflict Between Man and woman

In the story, Strickland shows a strong feeling of misogyny which is the symbol of disharmony between man and woman.

Disharmony between man and woman can be identified in this novel through Maugham ’s depiction of the three women images—which go to opposite extremes. Mrs. Strickland is vain and hypocritical; Blanche is ungrateful and concupiscent; while Ata, a pretty and naïve native girl on the Tahiti Island, is an ideal partner of a man.

2.1     Strickland VS Mrs.Strickland

The story shows us that there exists a serious disharmony between Mr. Strickland and his wife. On the one hand, the wife knows nothing about his husband’s dream let alone the reason he left her. She even consider the escape of her husband as an affair caused by another woman. On the other hand, the husband had kept an invisible distance between his wife and himself for 17 years and never shew his real personality.  

2.2     Disharmony between Strickland and Blanche

As for Blanche, she had been being an good wife for a long time before meeting Strickland. She fell in love deeply with Strickland. This kind of love is just physical.While as for Strickland , he can never fall in love with Blanche just like the narrator said in the story: “I could not believe that Strickland had fallen in love with Blanche Stroeve. I did not believe him capable of love. There still exists many evidences in the rest of this story to prove the disharmony between Strickland and Blanche, here no more quotes.

2.3     Strickland VS Ata

Compared with the other two female characters in this story, Ata seems to be more suitable for Strickland as a company. At the beginning we may consider it harmonious for Strickland to live together with Ata, for she is hospital and generous. She is full of traits of maternity Yet Strickland still left her forever. In his deep inside, he didn’t accept Ata. He was doomed to be a lonely spiritual explorer and no one can rally understand him.

Conclusion

In conclusion, we can see that in ecologist’s view, woman and man should be equal, for a world without woman cannot be maintained. Besides, ecologists advocate concern and love, admit that non-human organisms are also subjects of life, regard all life subjects as members of moral community, and seriously treat basic right and intrinsic value of non-human beings. These are also what The Moon and Sixpence tries to tell us indeed.

（作者单位：鲁东大学）