The contradiction: ideal and reality

Bread or ideal? It is believed that countless people have struggled between the pursuit of their dreams and contentment with their present life, and finally most of them choose to compromise with the latter. The Moon and Sixpence tells a story of a man who suddenly decides to abandon his stable life to chase a kind of purest and greatest painting art in his mind. The Moon and Sixpence, which written by famous British novelist William Somerset Maugham, is based on Paul Gaugin, a French post impressionist painter. The main character named Strickland is an ordinary securities engineer without any painting foundation. However, one day, he abandons his wife and children, leaving for Paris to pursue his dream of perfect painting art. During this time He suffers a lot both physically and mentally every day. Ultimately, he choose to lock himself away with the civilized world, complete his last and greatest work on an isolated island and die there. After reading this book, personally, I consider it a strange, crazy but also pure, romantic story. The reason why I say it is grotesque refers to the plot development and the character image. First, the prototype character Paul Gaugin is a painter himself and the pursuit of painting art runs through his whole life. Therefore, it is understandable and reasonale that he finally chose to change his normal boring life for pure art. In the process of narration, the author conceals the plot preparation and the detailed change process of the character’s psychology and designs Strickland to finish a sudden change from a man who having noting to do with art to a fanatical pursuer of art. With this strong sense of abruptness, the author creates a kind of grotesque and absurd style.Secondly, the author makes the bystander "I" to be the first perspective of narration, using fuzzy means to virtualize the character image, which also adds a sense of discontinuity and illusion. The reason why I think the story pure and romantic is that slightly different from the traditional contradiction between general ideal and reality, The Moon and Sixpence highlights the contradiction between art and life. The ultimate pursuit of something far away from modern civilization is so crazy for many people’s perspective. But it is precisely because of what Strickland chases is a kind of so-called perfect and excellent painting art that brings his crazy activity a trace of romance. "To pursue a dream is to pursue one's own misfortune. There are sixpence all over the ground, but he looks up and sees the moon." However, through the absurdity readers can actually see the appearance of reality. There can be two interpretations of the sentence "there are sixpence all aver the world". The first is from the perspective of Strickland, he have seen the world and get tired of the baffling life, then he come to the other extreme, which is actually can be seen as a kind of awakening and resistance after a long time of depression.The second can be describe that wherever there are crowded of people who are trapped in life.They have to bury their heads and fix their eyes on the ground in search of any "sixpence" that support their lives so that they miss the bright moon in the sky. Then, what is worth thinking about is the true purpose of the pursuit of one’s dream. To shape a more perfect self or just to make excuses for escapism to find the so-called utopia? In the end, I consider that in fact we don't need to be paranoid for pursuing some ideal and then get away from reality because most of people don't have this kind of extreme courage. The better is that we are down-to-earth and have both of our feet on the ground, then try to step closer to our dreams.