This study analyzes the expression of Maugham's ironic vision in his short stories set in the South Seas and Southeast Asia. Through point of view, setting, character, and plot, Maugham explores the dialectic of expectation outcome, hope-disappointment, and illusion-reality. In the exotic short stories, not only do Maugham's characters confront this dialectic, but readers do as well. Using irony as a heuristic, Maugham prods his readers into rethinking unexamined assumptions about human nature and about the often disillusioning repercussions of clinging to ideals or having unrealistic expectations of life.The narrative voice in Maugham's stories, whether that of the omniscient or the dramatized first-person narrator, draws attention to the discrepancy between the ideal and the actual, using irony to highlight characterization as people are shown to be something other than they might be or what they are. Further, the narrators also establish a context for irony by inviting readers to share their insights on characters and conflicts, thereby emphasizing their distance from the characters who speak and act in ignorance of the actual state of affairs.Relying upon the conventions of realism, which assumes that man may find his destiny shaped by his responses to an environment, and using that environment to achieve artistic ends, Maugham demonstrates that setting generates irony as it precipitates tension, conflict, and sudden revelations of character. In other instances, the irony grows from Maugham's explorations of his characters' expectations of the exotic settings, suggesting that the tropical paradises are places of nightmares, as well as dreams.The volatile combination of setting and character often erupts in shocking plot reversals that have become the hallmark of Maugham's narrative techniques. The ironies of plot surface as characters and the first-person narrators confront realities that have been hidden or that have been denied. In many cases, the characters and the narrators have allowed their ideals or expectations to mislead them or cloud their judgment. Other plot ironies occur with the frame stories, as the narrators connect the fictive world of the story to the factual world of the reader, thus juxtaposing the ironic dialectic of reality and fiction.Throughout the exotic short stories, the designs of Maugham's narrative technique suggest that irony effectively expresses his philosophic stance on the ambiguity of human motives and the futility of idealism. / Department of English
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:BSU/oai:cardinalscholar.bsu.edu:handle/174945 |
| Date | January 1989 |
| Creators | Barker, Debra Kay Stoner |
| Contributors | Jennings, C. Wade |
| Source Sets | Ball State University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Format | 236 leaves ; 28 cm. |
| Source | Virtual Press |
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