вторник, 25 декабря 2012 г.

W. Somerset Maugham - "In a Strange Land" .

Author:  Maugham, William Somerset , 1874–1965, English writer, b. Paris. He was noted as an expert storyteller and a master of fiction technique. An introverted child afflicted with a stammer, Maugham was orphaned at 10 and sent to live with his uncle, a vicar. Although he later studied medicine and completed his internship, he never practiced, having decided at an early age to devote himself to literature. He lived in grand style, spending much of his life on the French Riviera and traveling widely, particularly to East Asia and the South Pacific. Maugham wrote with wit and irony, frequently expressing an aloofly cynical attitude toward life. Famous as a dramatist before he became known for his novels and short stories, he achieved his first success with the sardonically humorous play Lady Frederick (1907). This was followed by a series of commercial successes, the best being The Circle (1921), Our Betters (1923), and The Constant Wife(1927).
 Title :  If we speak about  direct title of this story, it means something unknown, enclosed space for a person , a new territory without it current exploration, and if we speak about the indirect meaning of it, it means a splitting by our  nature , the eternity of wanderings ( the Islands are static, just a surreal event of a planetary scale can rejoin  them to mix into one substance - just as the uniqueness of characters' birthplaces).
Themes:  The first theme it's a different polarities of people from one country - even  we are from one state, our blood rages with different colors, and the history of this novel is largely related to the insurmountable odds of people . And the second theme is connected with the issue of spiritual unity of all humankind. We are all brothers and sisters, no matter what many other people say, andt we have only to understand and accept "the human thought" (globally ) with our mental way of living through the gloom of the world  - in fact, we are not so different and we want to love and be loved, to live happily, to have good health.
Summary:This story tells us about a man-traveler, whose lead aim isn't the wish to see the  cultural saturation of these countries,  but the  desire to explore the human factor, ( simply -  to find new and interesting people. )And during the development of the story, he visited Anadolu, where he found an amazing womanSignora Niccolini, an English woman. Her story is very sensitive one - she was in the family of rich English man, as a house-keeper, and found her love there , a man , that also worked in that mension. Their love was rapid, they decided to earn some money in order to travel to Turkey and to buy a small hotel there. And so the did it, but after several years her husband had died and she had to stay there within his help and with HIS children, adopted with all her support ( and another special feature of this woman, that the  feeling of home country as the country of Turkey wasn't inside her heart, she was an English-woman with really strong roots ).
Main Idea:    The main idea of this story is that being born in one country, you can't feel the same love for  the other country (even if you was brought up there,  I suppose) because something inextricably linked between your  heart and place of your appearance into the world has always beckons you up to the end of your life.
 Charatcer Sketch  :  Signora Niccolini is an independent woman, a true fighter and devoted wife, a woman who knows the price of a  material prosperity and the struggle for survival in a harsh world (working as a house-keeper helped her in a lot) She lives with her  children in Turkey, the widow of the Italian man, who had accepted husband"s illegitimate children, like her own. Her life is a symbol of resistantnce of a character to the unfair events and patriotic love of the homeland, even miles away fromher home "Pinata".
My own impression:  I liked this story, because it has as main aim to show us woman's gratuitous love and  feeling of compassion and strength of character. The death of her husband - a serious blow for this woman, but she didn't give up his children and took the fuul control over the situation. I give my great sincere respect for such people, the patriots of the soul,  to the support -unit for others.

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