When a vagabond has given up a privileged life and becomes a people’s life guide

(This review involves novel spoilers about The Razor's Edge, stop reading now if you don’t want to be spoiled.)

The Ultimate Question

Becoming the embodiment of the ultimate quest for meaning in the hearts of many readers, Larry, the main character in the novel The Razor's Edge, seems to have completed a journey to discover the ultimate meaning of life in a fictional world in place of most people. Before further exploring the reasons why Larry becomes such an important soul, let's take a look at what kind of legendary life Larry has lived and what major problems he has faced.

Larry is the protagonist of the novel The Razor's Edge written by the famous author Maugham. The novel tells the story of Larry, a middle-class American scion from a wealthy family who chooses to wander the world after participating in World War I, and years later donates his huge inheritance and works as an ordinary cab driver in New York. I know the life choices embodied in these two sentences are hard to understand. Because even in today's materialistic life, it is hard for people to give up their wealth and then lower their social class to live.

Larry was originally a very ordinary young American. He had already befriended many middle-class American peers by the time he was twenty and was engaged to the prettiest of them, Isabel, who was also from a very good family. Larry was also about to enter banking after his military service, and everything was going so well. But fate played a big joke on him. Larry met a good friend when he enlisted in the army, and the friendship of young people became very deep along with the cruelty of war. But one day, in a fierce battle, Larry's good friend died to save him. That day, it seemed that something collapsed in Larry's heart.

Larry returned to New York with an honourable discharge, and everyone treated Larry as a combat hero and was incredibly friendly to him. After meeting his family and friends, Larry chose to go to Paris for a walk, writing to Isabel that he just wanted to take a break and think about things before he joined the service. However, when Isabelle chases him to Paris to propose marriage, Larry turns her down and says he does not want to work in the United States. In this chapter, I think the author cleverly reflects the dialogue between the two with two very different values and outlooks on life.

Larry Darrell: I don't think I'm the guy you wanna' marry right now. This isn't the old Mr Sunshine. I'm not happy. I can't make myself happy. I couldn't make you happy. I just wanna think. I need to think. And I don't have much experience in that field.

Isabel Bradley: "Think"? Think about what?

Larry Darrell: I don't know. Me, you, our lives. I'll tell you when I start thinking.

Isabel Bradley: So you want me and everyone else to just go on and on sitting here, waiting for you to figure out the meaning of life?

Larry Darrell: Well, sort of, yeah.

Isabel Bradley: Well, that's just great.

A picture from movie The Razor's Edge (1946)

Larry Darrell: How I wish you could understand that the life I am suggesting to you is much more fulfilling than any life you could imagine. I wish I could show you how exciting the spiritual life is and how rich the experience is. It has no end. It is a life of extreme happiness. There is only one thing similar to it, and that is when you fly alone in an airplane into the sky, higher and higher, higher and higher, with only infinite space surrounding you, and you are intoxicated in the infinite space. You feel that extreme happiness that makes you regard any power and honour in the world as if it were nothing. The other day, I read Descartes, so painful, elegant and fluid. My God!

Isabel Bradley: I'm young. I'm going to have fun. I'm going to do what everyone else is doing. I'm going to parties, I'm going to balls, I'm going to play golf and ride horses. I'm going to wear nice clothes. Do you know what it's like when a girl can't dress as well as the people she's with? Larry, do you know what it's like to buy your friends' old clothes that they're tired of wearing and have pity on you and give you a new one to wear? I can't even afford to go to a decent barbershop to get my hair done. I don't want to go around in trams and buses; I want my own car. Just imagine, you're reading in the library, what am I doing all day every day? Strolling down the street, looking at the windows, or sitting in the garden of the Luxembourg Museum watching out for my children not to get into trouble? We won't even have friends.

Isn't this the perfect summary of all the material and spiritual confrontations in the world? Isn't this the self-talk that everyone must go through on the journey of life? Therefore, after Larry experienced the test of life and death, his pursuit of life values has been different from normal people. There may have been an element of chance in Larry making this choice, like the friend who died for him, and the legacy his parents left him. But I think it was inevitable that such a life choice would come about, even if it wasn't Larry, it would have been someone else. I later read a lot of reviews, some despise Isabel, and some despise Maugham to write Larry so unearthly. But I like both of them because I find myself part Larry and part Isabel, both of which are trails I've travelled in life.

The Meaning of Larry's Existence

Although I said that it is inevitable that life choices like Larry's appear in reality, he is a person that can only be seen in a fictional work like fiction.

How do you understand this statement? Let's look at the incidents that intersect with Larry, who first renounces his engagement to Isabelle and then goes to France to help a prostitute and another woman with a tragic fate to live better. Larry travelled the world, he also worked as a crew member, then went to India to learn Buddhism from an old man, after which he returned to France to continue to be friends with Isabel and her husband, and finally returned to the United States to work as a cab driver. In other words, in reality, if there is such a person who is only absorbed in the spiritual world and has penetrated the way to salvation, he would hardly have the energy or the motivation to make it all public himself, unless all those who have contacted him or received help come forward. Because such a person devotes all his attention and thought to deep inward exploration, his outward expression often seems ordinary or even out of place in society, so that no one has the opportunity to notice how rich and satisfying the inner world of such a person is.

However, I am deeply grateful to the author for creating such an idealist who is infinitely close to perfection. Larry certainly understands the woes of the earth, and both his redemption of Sophie and his rescue of Susan and her daughter is the sincere love of a pilgrim. Larry was also graceful, and when confronted with the sarcastic derision of his former acquaintances for his poverty in wandering, Larry never cared, and he even continued to offer help and kindness. Larry is persistent as a pilgrim of the truth, for his quest and quest for education experienced many setbacks and failures, and he lived in poverty and hardship, but they did not stop him. Larry provides a life template for the reader's idealism so that the light hidden in people's hearts finds a beacon to show the direction.

Of course, at the same time, some people may ask, "Larry, the ideal figure living in the clouds, does he exist only to contrast with the earth with its many holes? Many people dislike Larry's position because it seems that this false and unrealistic nobility is annoying as if a light-hearted "poetry and faraway places" can really fight against the meticulousness of the present. However, Maugham must portray a spiritual wanderer who is able to embark on a pilgrimage. Unlike Isabel, Larry's existence is not about the authenticity of the character, but more like a vehicle that leads the reader to look for the possibility of a spiritual world beyond the actual life.

I am also grateful to Maugham for making the final choice for Larry. He embraces the most ordinary life with open arms after completing his spiritual journey. He would drive a taxi or work as an auto mechanic for a living because he loved cars; he wrote, but not for publication, only to record, to record the spiritual journey and confusion. He is not accountable to anyone, he is not afraid of labour and material hardship, and he is not afraid of loneliness, he wants to build his own spiritual kingdom.

Living Like Larry

W. Somerset Maugham

Larry is certainly not perfect, and children know that there are no perfect people in the world. There is no denying that the author has a clear preference for Larry's portrayal in his writing, and even when he wanders the world alone, he does not set up a very harsh realistic dilemma. This part I see as the "halo" of the protagonist. Outside the halo, Larry is an ordinary, optimistic, straightforward, gentle friend. And the beacon I saw came from the fact that I met such a pure soul in the book.

In fact, I don't think one can acquire the truth after a lifetime of seeking it. For man is born in a progressive line of truth, which can be approached infinitely but is not attained. The ideal exists for direction, not for acquisition. In this sense, ideals can never be secular, never have anything to do with fame, fortune and success, and will always be a tragic quest. It is for this reason that I was deeply moved by Larry's pilgrimage, his spiritual suffering, and by his moment of nirvana. I am grateful to Maugham for allowing me to gaze in such a direction.

Larry's search for truth starts from the mere world of books, and after touching the earthly world in its different forms and stages, it seems to move towards Eastern religions, even adding a demonstration of the mysterious spiritual power of the East. But the more I read it, the more I felt that the final return to religion was just a pretext, a concrete form of "pilgrimage" that the author used to make it easier to understand. How else would one describe the form in which one finally approaches or even touches the truth?

Of course, I don't think Maugham teaches the "way to liberation" in this book, nor does he show how to achieve happiness through Larry. What I experienced over and over again through The Razor's Edge, after all those paragraphs of clear words, was a kind of "watching". The drifting and bitterness of life are understood through seeing, and compassionate through understanding. After the penetration and despair, in the meticulous and fragmented details of life, maybe, maybe, our life with its many holes will finally be illuminated by the light of spiritual possibilities.

Reference: https://book.douban.com/subject/2035162/