Analyse of Escape

Analysis of the story ‘The Escape’ by Somerset Maugham The story “The Escape” written by an English writer Somerset Maugham is under the interpretation. This is a story about common people in common situation, and Maugham manages to tell it with the sense of humour and in a very interesting way. The story has a straight line narrative structure with author’s digressions at the beginning. The author establishes realistic setting to his piece of writing. He is the observer-writer, he uses the first-person narrative structure, but the narrator nevertheless is a secondary personage in his story. The main heroes here are Roger Charing and Ruth Barlow. To describe them, Maugham uses the direct characterization. The story can be divided into four main parts: the exposition, passages about Ruth’s and Roger’s love, Roger falls out of love and the break-up. The story starts from the exposition in which the author introduces the reader with the problem. So, the problem is that if a woman wants to marry a man, it’s a man’s hazard. He has to find the way out of the situation. In the exposition the author uses metaphor talking about marriage as a dangerous thing (“flight could save him”, “the inevitable loom”), he also uses direct speech (expressing the thoughts of “a friend of him”) and a simple emotive epithet (“women are fickle”). His humour here is in the fact that the poor friend came to what he had run away from, so this is a situational humour. Then comes the opening, in which both Roger Charing and Ruth Barlow are introduced. There is also humour (irony) in these passages – it is said that Ruth was twice a widow, which makes the reader guess that Roger is the next victim, through the figurative simile (“He went down like a row of ninepins”) and epithet “defenceless” used towards the men. The author also uses a question perimphasis (“(or should I call it a quality?)”). He also gives a direct description of Ruth’s eyes using the epithets (“splendid”, “moving”, “big and lovely”), a detached epithet (“poor dear”) – all in the ironic way. He also passes to second-person and then to first person narration in characterizing Roger’s attitude towards Ruth, this was made to make the reader feel that the situation of falling in love with Ruth was inevitable for Roger. In the description of Ruth’s sufferings the author uses anaphora (“if she…, if she…”, etc.) to emphasize that she was really a poor thing, also ironically. Especially ironically sounds the metaphoric allusion “she never had a lamb ”). The author uses the direct speech in which such epithets as “callous” (speaking about the narrator), “rotten” (speaking about Ruth) are used. We can recognize now completely that all the narrator’s words were ironic, because his epithets towards Ruth are like that, and also “stupid” and a simile “as hard as nails”. Then there comes an explanation of why he has such an attitude towards the poor widow. So, using the author’s characterization we can make a conclusion that Ruth is a woman of poor intellect, but she is capable of scheming and uses her position to arouse pity in people. The author also uses repetition of the words “pathos”, “pathetic” in the description of this woman. Roger, from these passages, seems to a reader a “strong and hefty” fellow who is noble enough to sympathize with a poor little woman in trouble and to “stand between the hazards of life and this helpless little thing” (a visual-imaged metaphor), but in the same time he looks a bit foolish on the background of the narrator’s irony. Going further, we come across an anticlimax. The tense is growing, but then Roger “on a sudden, fell out of love”. This is a bit unexpected. Ruth’s “pathetic (a repeated epithet) look ceased to wring Roger’s heart-strings” (a metaphor). But Roger “swore a solemn oath” (a metaphor) not to jilt Ruth, moreover, she was able to “assess her wounded feelings at an immoderately high figure” (an extended metaphor). And here begins the real climax with its growing tense. The author uses repetitions: anaphoras (“they… they”, “sometimes… sometimes”), morphological (“they looked, they inspected, they climbed”). After the main heroes’ reasoning in direct speech, their proceeded searching for a house looks like a repetition, too. Yet, the author uses an antonomasia here, calling Roger an angel (though we know he is not – an irony). Their further reasoning in the direct speech appears to be the climax (“do you want to marry me or do you not?”). Roger kept standing on his position (epithets “assiduous and gallant”). Their letters are the denouement, happy for Roger. Roger appeared to be very smart and sly person. He appeared quite cute to predict Ruth’s following actions. When he got the hang of Ruth, he pretended he was still in love very gallantly, until she got the hang of him, and I should say it was a more civilized way of jilting a woman than just to leave her. So, I think the message of the story is that a woman can be sly and scheming, but a man can make it his way also.