I’m going to analyze a novel “The Happy Man” by Somerset Maugham, a well-known English novelist, short-story writer, playwright and essayist. William Somerset Maugham was born in Paris, educated at King’s school in Canterbury and studied to be a doctor at St. Thomas Hospital in England. He was one of the best known writers of his time as he was master of short stories.
The story starts with the narrator thinking and telling the reader about his attitude to giving advice to somebody. He thinks it to be quite difficult and even impossible to give the right advice as “we know nothing of the others”. The whole first paragraph of the story is devoted to the narrator’s expressing the opinion on life, the manner of bourgeois society and the danger of ordering the lives of others. Then the author goes on telling a story that once happened to the narrator.
This novel runs about a desperate man who confided his life to a total stranger. The theme of the novel: a man’s search for happiness; the role of advice in the life of people. The main characters of the story are the narrator and Stephens.
The main character is the narrator. There is no any information about his appearance in the text. The only one thing about his age is the information that he was a young man when he advised well. Nevertheless we can judge about his character from his thoughts, behavior and speech. The description of his character is indirect. He is a wise man: he knows that it is impossible to know another persons as well as oneself to give him/her advice which would be good for him/her. And he is bold enough for a man who dares to give the life changing advice to a man he see for the first time.
The narrator was an intelligent, clever and bright. We can judge by his way of narration, speech. He is an educated person, he uses literary vocabulary mostly, for instance, such words as errand, flounder, squeamish, silences. Connotation of words is positive and the way