A Contrast Between Stories of Yen Mah and William Somerset Maugham
One abandons family to reach for dreams while the other reaches goals to gain family acceptance, the main characters from two touching stories intertwined with each other in experience although they face different hardships and obstacles. During different historical periods, across different age groups, and occurring at different places, the memoir Falling Leaves by Adeline Yen Mah and the historical fiction The Moon and Sixpence by William Somerset Maugham still portray stories with similar elements and ultimately comparable lessons. Both authors depict character growth through the peaceful endings leading up to self-realization from their eventful lives. In Falling Leaves, Yen Mah expresses a heartbreaking story based on her traumatic childhood experiences from her abusive relationship with her step mother. In The Moon and Sixpence, Mangham depicts a character’s journey of achieving his dream as a painter at the expense of abandoning his family and old style of life. Although the novels Falling Leaves by Adeline Yen Mah and The Moon and Sixpence by William Somerset Maugham differ from each other in the ways theme and aphorism are expressed, both authors employ similar rhetorical techniques in arrangements as well in voice and tone to create a greater impact on the readers while preserving the purest emotions behind the story.
Yen Mah and Maugham incorporate similar structures by purposefully starting and ending the narration of the story with meaningful events and a unique perspective rather than following chronological orders. In Falling Leaves, Yen Mah utilizes a characteristic organizational pattern that not only interests the reader but also evokes impactful connections. Instead of starting the novel chronologically, Yen Mah opens the novel with a pivotal scene, her father’s funeral, in order to establish the tone of the novel and provide family background while grabbing readers’ attention. For example, Yen Mah illustrates that although their stepmother Niang declared that their father, who was a wealthy businessman, died penniless, “No one said anything...No one questioned the legitimacy of Niang’s actions”. The seemingly unusual actions by the characters and the amount of power possessed by Niang interest readers to read further to find out the reasons behind Niang’s authority within the family. The use of short syntax in the prologue efficiently sets up for the tone of the entire novel by expressing emotional events in a detached, calm and manner. In addition to the opening of the novel, the structural organization for the novel ending also utilizes momentous life events: “day after day, as I sat beside her and watched her lapse into a coma from which she never woke, I believe that my nearness would help her along her final journey”. By ending the novel with the death of Aunt Baba, the only character whom Yen Mah felt connection with, Yen Mah efficiently draws the reader in to form emotional connections with Yen Mah’s ultimate self-realization of recognizing her past want for acceptance as inessential. The powerful ending also reflects back to the mournful events that Yen Mah experienced and the theme and title of the book, falling leaves return to their roots. Overall, the organizational patterns that Yen Mah intentionally implements create meaningful impact on the way readers perceive the novel and the emotional appeal associated with it.
Similarly, The Moon and Sixpence follows the same arrangement by strategically avoiding to narrate chronologically in order to better reflect the characteristics of the protagonist and deepen the emotional impact. Writing in third person, Maugham starts the novel with the description of th
protagonist Strickland by the narrator Crabbe after Crabbe has undergone Strickland’s journey with him. For example, the narrator, Crabbe, highlights that in art, “the greatness of Charles Strickland was authentic” but he also“lived obscurely. He made enemies rather than friends”. By describing Strickland from Crabbe’s later perspective after he was already acquainted to Strickland, Maugham establishes a distinct insight to Strickland’s personality which allows the readers to understand future actions by Strickland as the story goes on. Such unique contrast in Strickland’s personality as a person and an artist evokes the reader to find out more about this character. Furthermore, Maugham intentionally ends the novel in an abrupt manner to connect with the start of the novel and form a full cycle of story. For instance, Maugham ends the novel with a seemingly irrelevant detail: Uncle henry “remembered the days when you could get thirteen Royal Natives for a shilling”. Like Yen Mah, Maugham intentionally employs such organization of the novel to end the novel peacefully yet precisely by placing an emphasis on family. The overly specific reference and imagery and cycles back to the earlier period of life when Strickland lacked warmth of family. Royal Natives symbolizes the desire for a caring family and yearn to go back to the short instant of family’s love of both Strickland and the author himself. The way both Yen Mah and Maugham starts and ends the novel efficiently interests readers to further explore the characters and form emotional connections.
Yen Mah and Magham’s stories not only share similar structures, but also tones that express characters’ journeys in a detached and emotionless manor. Throughout the novel, Yen Mah uses first person and a detached tone in order to portray an authentic story and make appeals to ethos. For example, Yen Mah starts the narration of childhood with the statement in the prologue: “in order to explain our collective docility that afternoon, I have to go back to the very beginning. A Chinese proverb says that luo ye gui gen”. The use of first person directly represents her real experiences and memories thereby making the story appear more realistic to directly illustrate to the readers the purest capture of experiences in the novel. The use of first person pronoun “we” has a more important effect of indirectly illustrating Yen Mah’s respect for her family and her desire to be accepted. In addition, Yen Mah expresses the story in a detached tone even during impactful events and tremendous low points of her life. For instance, Yen Mah’s tone is emotionless even upon her mother’s death: “The headaches and fevers started three days after I was born...Her condition worsened”. The overall emotionless monotone makes a direct contrast with the dramatic changes in her life to the calmness in tone when she recounts these changes. It also made an appeal to ethos by focusing on telling the details of the story with a placid tone in order to preserve her most authentic life experience.
In a similar manner, Maugham also utilizes first person point of view as well as a detached tone in order to present a unique point of view and adds an additional layer of the progressional understanding between two characters. For example, after recounting Strickland’s story, the narrator reflects that “my study of Strickland’s character suffers from a graver defect than my ignorance of many facts...I wrote of his reactions to women; yet they were but an insignificant part of his life”. By using first person point of view to describe another person’s life, Maugham makes the story richer and more complex by including the narrator’s opinions and growth thereby eventually revealing the progress of the narrator’s ability to understand Strickland in a deeper level. Maugham also makes great use of the advantage of first person point of view, to illustrate opinions and judgement throughout the protagonist Strickland’s journey. Furthermore, like Yen Mah, Maugham also utilizes a detached tone to hide strong emotions gained from experiences while expressing revealing meanings messages behind the emotionless tone. As Dirk helped to heal Strickland from his illness, Strickland had an affair with Dirk’s wife, Blanche, and resulted in her leaving Dirk and eventually committing suicide after Strickland rejected her. Even after such a sorrowful event, the narrator summarizes it calmly: “As lovers, the difference between men and women is that women can love all day long, but men only at times”. In an emotionless tone, Maugham factually points out the sorrowful principle that indirectly causes Blanche’s death while generalizing such contrast between men and women to humanity. More importantly, the calm tone mocks at Strickland’s actions of not being single-minded thereby death of Blanche seem more regretful to readers. The use of first person and a detached tone by both Yen Mah and Mangham makes the stories more authentic and elevates its impact on the readers by employing a contrast between the emotionless tone and the wretched events.
Though obvious similarities are present in Yen Mah and Mangham’s use of rhetoric, their style primarily differ in the way themes and symbolisms were expressed as Yen Mah explicitly illustrates them through Chinese titles while Mangham does so explicitly . Throughout Falling Leaves, Yen Mah skillfully titles each chapter with a lesson learned from her experience in order to form a web of interconnected elements that all contribute to the overall theme and didactic of the book, falling leaves return to roots. After receiving the grievous news of her grandmother's death, Yen Mah describes that “her life had evaporated like yi chang chun ment (an episode of a spring dream)”. The simile efficiently portrays how her grandmother's death marked the end of an era of happiness and foreshadows an era of darkness under Niang’s regime. The word “evaporate” artfully expresses the loss of her grandmother and forms a connection to a Chinese aphorism. Ultimately, Yen Mah ends with the final anaphora “Life had come full circle. Luo ye gui gen.(Falling leaves return to their roots)”. The explicit restatement of the theme that serves as the guiding principle throughout the novel allows readers to fully understand the importance of such lessons and further highlights her self-identity shaped by her culture and experiences. The symbolism reveals Yen Mah’s growth since she now fully understands that she no longer needs to seek acceptance from the people around her; she instead found Aunt Baba as her roots is and will be always there for her even as the cycle of life continues in the future.
In contrast to the direct statement of themes and lessons, Mangham uses the details of the story to reflect the impact of the theme and title of the novel, the moon and sixpence, implicitly. Strickland’s decisions serve as a direct reflection of the principle and leads to a more meaningful moral lesson to be learned. For example, after Strickland’s leave for Paris, Mrs. Strickland told the narrator anxiously: “‘He’s gone off to Paris... He’s left Amy without a penny!”. The statement serves as a representation of the symbolism and title, the moon and sixpence. The sixpence symbolizes wealth and status that are associated with monetary values while the moon symbolizes the distant reach for dreams. Although most people choose to keep the attainable sixpence, Strickland became the few who were courageous enough to abandon his past wealth and family, to reach for the moon, or his dream to be an artist. His wife’s cry further suggests the isolation that Strickland felt on his journey without having family support. This leads to the principle that having the courage to gaze intently at the moon rather than only holding on to sixpence are extremely rare and valuable. Furthermore, Dirk realizes Strickland’s talent: ““Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem”. Without directly alluding to any preexisted aphorism like Yen Mah did, Magham instead implicitly beings up the theme of looking within and being unique through the use of symbolism. The mask symbolizes conformity and responsibilities that pressure people to shift away from searching for their dreams. Maugham brings up the powerful idea that by not reaching for dreams like Strickland did, the mask will stay on and the chances will be lost forever. Ingeniously, Maugham never mentions the title of the novel in the book, but instead shows the symbolism behind the moon, sixpence, and the mask through Strickland’s journey. This strategy glaringly contrasts with Yen Mah’s explicit reference to Chinese aphorisms and the way she uses them as guiding principles for the novel by titling the novel and each chapter with a relevant aphorism.
In conclusion: a traumatic childhood experience, a courageous yet difficult journey, Adeline Yen Mah’s Falling Leaves and William Somerset Maugham’s The Moon and Sixpence share similar elements reflected through the use of rhetorics although each also employed unique styles. Both Yen Mah and Maugham makes great use of arrangement to make the story stand out and first person point of view as well as a detached tone to make an appeal to ethos. The difference in their ways of approaching themes and aphorism achieved similar effects in revealing the importance of the characters’ eventful life in each story. Throughout the memoir, each author captures the purest emotions behind each story and reveals the lessons to be learned from each experience.
