Ideal and Reality

The Moon and Sixpence is a world-famous novel written by William Somerset Maugham in 1919, which presents writer’s deep thought of the relationship between ideal and reality. The hero, Charles Strickland, was a stockbroker in London having a complete family, who seemed to be a winner in life. However, he abandoned his career and family unexpectedly in order to chase his dream of painting in Paris even though he didn’t have any fundamental of drawing. As his paintings were always against the original things and got little approval, he was left without a penny and nearly died of starvation. He then settled in Tahiti with a native woman living a free and peaceful life. Unluckily, Strickland was soon infected with leprosy and became a blinder. In his final time, he insisted on drawing and finished a giant mural painting. This character was created based on the life of Gauguin, who was also an agent before becoming a painter and lived a desperate poor life. This famous artist add legendary quality to the story. But even though the outline of their life is so similar, Strickland shows much more irrational consciousness and make the story much more absurd and attracted. Besides, the book is also fascinating because of its unique narrative style. It tells the story in the first person and pull you in the story suffering the inner struggle faced with the choice between ideal and reality as the characters inside. The most successful aspect of this works is that it figured out the puzzlement deep inside people’s hearts at that time. In nineteenth century, it was commonly thought that life should be bound to the respect and obedience to formal order and most works in that period also showed the same opinion. Strickland was ever such a person living in a rigid pattern for a long time and gradually lost his talent, creativity and vitality. The prolonged depression finally led to another extreme that the irrational consciousness spread unchecked and destroy the rational order. The contradiction between spiritual requirement and material requirement will never disappear. We all hope to chase our dream despite the reality as Strickland and that’s why we loved this story. However, pure ideal world is only exists in stories, it’s impossible to separate oneself from the material life. From a broad perspective of life, the writer analyzed the weakness of human nature, and finally point out that a healthy life should be combine rational and irrational life style. We can find in the story that lack of ideal will lead to an outbreak and the lack of material will lead to a dilemma. Only when we maintain the balance between them, we can live with courage and happiness. “The ground is full of six pence, but he looked up and saw the moon.” We should realize the importance of ideal but it doesn’t mean that you need to give up all the six pence or stop the steps. And with the moonlight, you can even walk the road with more courage and reach a further destination.