The story "The Fall of Edward Barnard" by W. Somerset Maugham explores the clash between Western and Eastern cultural values. It tells of two friends, Edward and Bateman, who are in love with the same woman, Isabel. Edward travels to Tahiti for work but comes to prefer the simpler Eastern lifestyle. When Bateman visits to try to bring Edward back to America, Edward refuses, planning to marry a local woman and stay in Tahiti forever. The story examines how environment and culture shape a person, with Maugham portraying Eastern values more positively than the materialism of the West.
The story "The Fall of Edward Barnard" by W. Somerset Maugham explores the clash between Western and Eastern cultural values. It tells of two friends, Edward and Bateman, who are in love with the same woman, Isabel. Edward travels to Tahiti for work but comes to prefer the simpler Eastern lifestyle. When Bateman visits to try to bring Edward back to America, Edward refuses, planning to marry a local woman and stay in Tahiti forever. The story examines how environment and culture shape a person, with Maugham portraying Eastern values more positively than the materialism of the West.
The story "The Fall of Edward Barnard" by W. Somerset Maugham explores the clash between Western and Eastern cultural values. It tells of two friends, Edward and Bateman, who are in love with the same woman, Isabel. Edward travels to Tahiti for work but comes to prefer the simpler Eastern lifestyle. When Bateman visits to try to bring Edward back to America, Edward refuses, planning to marry a local woman and stay in Tahiti forever. The story examines how environment and culture shape a person, with Maugham portraying Eastern values more positively than the materialism of the West.
The story "The Fall of Edward Barnard" by W. Somerset Maugham explores the clash between Western and Eastern cultural values. It tells of two friends, Edward and Bateman, who are in love with the same woman, Isabel. Edward travels to Tahiti for work but comes to prefer the simpler Eastern lifestyle. When Bateman visits to try to bring Edward back to America, Edward refuses, planning to marry a local woman and stay in Tahiti forever. The story examines how environment and culture shape a person, with Maugham portraying Eastern values more positively than the materialism of the West.
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
Download as docx, pdf, or txt
You are on page 1/ 4
Complex Literary Text analysis
The Fall of Edward Barnard
1. About author. W. Somerset Maugham (born Jan. 25, 1874, Paris, France—died Dec. 16, 1965, Nice), English novelist, playwright, and short-story writer whose work is characterized by a clear unadorned style, cosmopolitan settings, and a shrewd understanding of human nature. His reputation as a novelist rests primarily on four books: Of Human Bondage (1915), a semi-autobiographical account of a young medical student’s painful progress toward maturity; The Moon and Sixpence (1919), an account of an unconventional artist, suggested by the life of Paul Gauguin; Cakes and Ale (1930), the story of a famous novelist, which is thought to contain caricatures of Thomas Hardy and Hugh Walpole; and The Razor’s Edge(1944), the story of a young American war veteran’s quest for a satisfying way of life. Maugham’s plays, mainly Edwardian social comedies, soon became dated, but his short stories have increased in popularity. Many portray the conflict of Europeans in alien surroundings that provoke strong emotions, and Maugham’s skill in handling plot, in the manner of Guy de Maupassant, is distinguished by economy and suspense. In The Summing Up (1938) and A Writer’s Notebook (1949) Maugham explains his philosophy of life as a resigned atheism and a certain skepticism about the extent of man’s innate goodness and intelligence; it is this that gives his work its astringent cynicism.
2. Short summary of the story.
W. Somerset Maugham's short story "The Fall of Edward Barnard" was published in The Trembling of a Leaf: Little Stories of the South Sea Islands in 1921 (available from Replica Books). The story is principally about two young men from Chicago, Bateman Hunter and Edward Barnard, who have been friends since their college days. They are in love with the same woman, a Chicago socialite named Isabel Longstaffe. For reasons of business, Edward travels to the South Sea island of Tahiti. He is expected to return in two years and marry Isabel. But after a while, Edward discovers that he likes living on the island, and he has no plans to return. Bateman travels to Tahiti and tries to persuade Edward, whom he believes to be wasting his life, to return to Chicago. But Edward, who has discovered a new set of values in Tahiti, refuses to change his mind. He plans to marry a Tahitian girl and spend the rest of his life in this tropical paradise. Thematically, "The Fall of Edward Barnard" deals with a clash of cultures between East and West. Maugham uses much irony to ensure that the East, where life is lived closer to nature, is seen in a better light than the materialistic West, as represented by Bateman and Isabel. The story also presents ideas about the role the social and cultural environment plays in shaping human character, and it illustrates Maugham's dislike of conventional morality.
3. Problem raised by author.
The story explores the old debate about whether people are what they are because of certain innate qualities (nature) or because they are shaped by the environment in which they live (nurture). 4. Main idea. Central to the story is the clash between Western and Eastern values and cultures. Bateman sums up the Western way of seeing things when he says, in answer to Edward's question about how a man gets the best out of life, "By doing his duty, by hard work, by meeting all the obligations of his state and station." Bateman, as an embodiment of the Chicago spirit of the 1920s, values money and power. He justifies this by saying that these assets help to create jobs for many people.
5. General definition of the text.
Maugham utilizes the technique of the frame story. This occurs when there is a story within a story. The frame in this story is the Chicago setting with which the narrative begins and ends. It is largely concerned with Bateman's interactions with Isabel. In between is the story of Edward and his Tahitian adventure. The frame story is a common technique in both ancient and modern literature. The best known example is probably Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. Maugham adopted, for part of the story, the form of the omniscient third-person narrator, who can see into the minds and emotions of all the characters. However, much of the story is told only through Bateman's point of view. This is known as a limited third-person narrator. The reader only knows events and people as they are seen through the eyes of the viewpoint character. During the part of the narrative set in Tahiti, for example, Edward and Jackson are seen entirely through Bateman's eyes, which adds to their mystery and enables Maugham to deepen the irony on which the meaning of the story rests. 6. Prevailing mood. Dramatic, melodramatic, emotional 7. Title analysis. The title of the story “The Fall of Edward Barnard” shows the attitude and thoughts about Edward from the point of view of Bateman and Isabel. Because Edward didn’t consider that his life became worse. He thought that he was happier, cleverer and everything in his life brought him only pleasure. As for me, he had chosen the right way in his life, but his attitude towards Isabel was awful. He could explain her new values in his life and give her a choice to be with him or not. But he continued to make her suffer. 8. The composition of the story. 1). The exposition (introduction). Acquaintance with the main characters. Bateman’s description of Isabel and her personality. Short description of Edward and Isabel’s love. 2) The development of the plot (an account of events) Bateman’s returning to the Chicago and dinner with Longstaffe’s family. Conversation between Isabel and Bateman (his story about going to Tahiti). His meeting with Edward Barnard. 3) The climax (the culmination point) Meeting with Arnold Jackson. Discovering changes in Edward’s character. 4) the denouement (the outcome of the story) The conclusion of the story about Edward. Bateman and Isabel love. 9. A) Phono-graphical Level. b) Morphological Level. c) Lexical Level: 1) Stylistic differentiation of the English Vocabulary 2) Semantic Groups of Words 3) Phraseological units 4) Lexical stylistic devices d) Syntactic Level of Analysis 1) Sentence Structure 2) Syntactic Stylistic Devices
