W.S. Maugham – Charles Strickland character sketch

Charles‘ Strickland character sketch

After having read “The Moon And Sixpense” by W.S. Maugham personally I feel really impressed and I still cannot recover from it. It amazed me much by its mystery and strangeness. The main character Charles Strickland is one of the most fascinating characters I have ever read about. His whole life story can be divided to two basic parts.

In the first part I made a quite different impression of Strickland’s personality than in the second one. As wwe can see, at first he seemed to be a sensitive, exemplary man and father, remarkably kindhearted, hard-working and highly moral person. He was working for his family and he managed to maintained them for seventeen years! That family didn’t lack anything and everybody could say that they all were happy together, not only from the first sight.

However Nature likes to play sometimes, and in some cases She is so pleased to see her children suffering and in big troubles. TThus Charles’ Strickland happy family life was a target that couldn’t remain as it was before. It was to be destroyed and bring harm and tragedy to other innocent people surrounding him.

So as we see in the second part everything tturned upside down. After abandoning his wife and kids, Strickland changed into a very different personality than he was before.

While living with his family being a kind and sensitive man, he became severe, indifferent to everything and everybody. He lived for only satisfying his needs and for.painting. He soon became utterly obsessed by the need to paint, and that obsession led him to do all sorts of socially unacceptable things. He started living pure emotional life. He refused comfort that he couldn’t live without in the past and chose a poor hotel room where he realized his brilliant ideas for painting. Poverty was a trouble for him anymore. Strickland didn’t care about himself much, what brought him to a sserious disease, that conditionally changed his life. He didn’t even need love, which he understood as a human weekness. Women were only a temporary entertainment for him; and he hated if any of them wanted to become his friend or adviser, because it seemed silly to him. Charles just enjoyed living on his own, not needing anything or anybody.

Time after time he was becoming more and more rude, unfeeling, callous, untalkative and reserved. He never liked literature so he didn’t eexpress his thoughts well. Though he discovered a way to express himself well – painting. He found means of expression that transcended language.

Charles Strickland lived in a dream and never cared about ...