Analysis of the story “The Happy Man”

Analysis of the story “The Happy Man”

The text under analysis is written by William Somerset Maugham (1874-1966), a well-known English novelist, short-story writer, playwright and essayist. His work is characterized by a clear unadorned style and a shrewd understanding of human nature. His famous works are Of Human Bondage (1951), The Moon and the Sixpence (1919), Theatre (1937), and others.

This story is about a man who is tired of his life, and one day he goes to the protagonist for advice. He dreams about Spain but he is afraid to take risks. At the end of the story the narrator meets this man in Spain, he is happy and lives a fulfilled life. This text can be logically subdivided into 3 parts.

The first part begins with the words “it is a dangerous thing” and ends “I advised well”.  It can be called “The role of advice”. The narrator thinks about the role of advice in person’s life and the human nature in the whole so we can say that the atmosphere here is rather philosophical and the type of the text in the part is narration and argumentation. The atmosphere is created with the help of metaphors “A prisoner in a solitary tower”, “Who flounder at the journey’s start”, “I have been forced to point the finger of fate»”, “Life is a difficult business”, “wrapped in the cloak of Destiny”. This part is full of literary words such as flounder, cloak, solitary and the author's object in employing them is quite evident, these words show the intelligent of the narrator and also help to create philosophical atmosphere. Another characteristic feature of this atmosphere is the rhetorical questions and here we can see one of them “How can one advise another how to act unless one knows that other as well as one knows himself ?”. The whole part presents the attempt to answer this question.

The second part starts with “I was young man” and ends “from my memory”. It can be called “Total stranger”. In this part doctor Stephens goes to the narrator for the advice, he doesn’t know him but he reads the book about Spain that the main character has written. The doctor tells about his life and that he wants change everything but he doesn’t want to take risk. After their conversation Stephens leaves and we don’t know about his decision. The part is presented in dialogue with some elements of narration. It is written in an anxious, tense tone. In this part we meet the main heroes of the story for the first time. They are both doctors (but the narrator doesn’t practice) so here we can meet a lot of words from medical sphere such as “infirmary”, “medical officer”, “trifling indisposition”,“appendix” etc. Doctor Stephens is depressed and embarrassed, he is tired of his life and he decides to come to unknown person for advice. The author lends some stylistic colouring to the description of the doctor’s portrait, he uses such stylistic device as oxymoron “dark and very bright eyes”, epithets “bullet-shaped hair”, “forcible ring” and the despair of him can be seen in epithet “apologetic laugh” and in the description of his speech “” There was something very striking in the short, sharp sentences he used”. When Doctor Stephens tells about his life he cannot keep his feelings “I’ve never been anywhere…I can’t stick it anymore” (gradation). The narrator tries to explain that life in Spain may differ from doctor’s dreams so the author employs here allusion “Carmen”, but Doctor Stephens doesn’t change his mind.