The Moon and Sixpence

You must have a friend who works in a bank, looks average, does a decent job, has a wife and children, works hard to support his family, doesn’t like to talk, but when he does speak, most of what he says is boring. In short, his appearance is so plain that he is a little person in the corner in any social situation. In fact, you probably have more than one such friend. In fact, you probably do.

Can you imagine this friend suddenly running away from home one day? Then, when you heard of him again, he was said to have arrived in Paris, and to be learning to draw from scratch, to be a painter.

It’s hard to imagine looking around at all of my friends with these characteristics, and neither can I. But Maugham wrote about a man like this. His name is Charles. After leaving a note saying “Dinner is ready”, he left his wife of 17 years and two children for Paris. He was forty years old, living in the most shabby hotel in All Paris, and had only one hundred dollars with him.

But this is not an inspiring story of how the dreamer overcame all odds to achieve greatness. If this is a story, the actor should be in his early 20 s, handsome, in the book, with beautiful daughter of a rich man, of course, will surely meet with a little jealous of his talent, the dog must compete for the lady with him, but justice will prevail over evil, male leading role to become a tycoon, lovers all’s well that ends well.

The Moon and Sixpence is not such a story. What kind of story is it? The whole world was chasing dreams, but Charles was chasing his doom. Well, these two things are not so different. People who are captured by their dreams are chasing their own bad luck. Of course, the dream mentioned here is a real dream, not “mom and dad said”, “the teacher said”, “television newspaper said” is said out of the blueprint, not the blue collar above the white collar, not the hunter set the sparrow in the trap of the rice.

Charles galloped away and succeeded in catching up with his misfortune. Five years later, he was poor and ill in Paris, dying in a small attic and almost dying unless a friend saved him. Later, he became a street worker. A few years later, he was exiled to a small island in the Pacific where he fell ill with leprosy, lost the sight of his eyes, and had his masterpiece set on fire before he died. Within 15 years, the London stock trader had raced across the city, civilization, the middle class, the Pacific, and humanity to catch up with destiny.

“He lives at another level.” There’s a line in The movie Big Night that Charles reminds me of. Other people’s lives are in addition, he is doing subtraction. Every human identity is a kind of self-abduction, only to lose is the road to freedom. So Charles refused to be a “husband,” a “father,” a “friend,” a “colleague,” an “Englishman. The “I” in the novel asks him, “Don’t you love your children?” “I have no special feelings for them,” he said. I asked him again, “Don’t you even need love?” And he said, “Love only interferes with my painting.” Others may sympathize with his poverty, but when he picked up a paintbrush he felt like a king.

Of course such people are hateful. He only sees himself in the eyes of no one else. He is selfish, irresponsible and disdains any relationship with the “society”. But he is innocent, for his eyes are not only without others, but even without himself. He didn’t choose to dream, he was hit by a dream. In his own words, “I have to draw, like a drowning man has to struggle.” If he is different from others, it is that he is more fatalistic than others. Dream how coquedarian, how sharp, people in panic to flee everywhere, fled to fame, or wealth, or seek fame and wealth but not resentment. But Charles refused to be one of the “people”. There were sixpence all over the place, but he looked up and saw the moon.

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