Reading || the hero Walter in "The Veil": it is the dog that dies

A veil of mystery and beauty

Today, I would like to introduce Maugham's novel "The Veil", which is respected by the majority of readers with its cold and ridiculous penmanship, rich ideological connotation and profound human insight. Today's article focuses on introducing the male protagonist Walter in the work.

After reading some reviews, I found that everyone pays more attention to the heroine Katie in the work, but talks less about the hero. Today we will talk about Walter.

01Are there still a veil behind the veil?

The storyline of The Veil is old-fashioned: it's a story that takes place in the Mid-19th Century in british colonial China, where bacteriologist Walter and his new wife, Katie, travel to Hong Kong, China, for scientific research. His wife, Katie, had an affair with someone and betrayed her husband.

In retaliation for Katie's infidelity, Walter takes her to a plague-ravaged rural province in southern China. Here Walter masochistically experiments with her body and eventually dies of germs, while Katie learns and grows in a harsh environment and eventually moves towards the ranks of independent women.

Some people say that the storyline is not fresh enough, but it is the British version of "Madame Bovary", but it is 100 years late; some people say that the background of the story is not special enough, but it is the unbearable war and plague; some people say that its momentum is not grand enough, although the geographical span is very large, but it has not been able to write the strength of the epic; others say that the text of the work is not beautiful and deep enough, and the narrative method is not characteristic.

So why does this novel, which seems to have an old plot, an outdated background, a bland language, and a weak narrative, get liked by a wide range of readers? Is there a second veil behind the veil?

In fact, Maugham has a vague and profound moral in this novel, and his feelings for his characters are quite complicated.

Walter is not Bethune, and his character of coexistence of good and evil is deeply thought-provoking; Katie is frivolous but not a slut or a demon, she is just a girl who has lost her nature.

02 Walter with a strange temperament

Walter is Katie's husband, and he is a bacteriologist. In the story, Wall is strange, sensitive, restrained and indifferent, and always shy when talking to women.

In Katie's eyes, he obviously has beautiful features, but he is not a handsome man. He was not tall, nor strong, small and thin; his skin was dark, he did not have a beard, his face was well-defined and looked very ordinary; his eyes were not large, his eyes were sluggish, his expression was slightly mocking, and he was lifeless all day, not active, and not good at words. He said it himself was much harder for me than for me.

Walter is a MD, but in Hong Kong, he's just an inconspicuous pawn. Taciturn, uninteresting, addicted to work, and content with this life, and accustomed to his own forgetting; he writes papers, reads books about history in his spare time, and enjoys playing tennis and bridge.

From our perspective today, Walter is actually a person with connotations, dedicated to work, considerate of his wife, and a good man at home.

But Katie, who likes to party and likes to be lively, does not love him, and the reason why she chose to marry him is only to find a meal ticket for herself.

On a summer afternoon, Walter, who never comes home at noon, finds Katie's affair when he returns home to deliver books to his wife.

This was a big blow to Walter. He said to Katie, "I have no illusions about you, I know you're stupid, frivolous, and empty-minded, but I love you." I know your intentions, your ideals, you are snobbish, vulgar, and yet I love you. I know you're a second-rate, but I love you. ...... I know that wisdom will surprise you, so be careful at all times and be sure to act like a fool like any man you interact with. I love you more than anything in this world. ”

In fact, in the end, his love for Katie is only succumbing to his own lust. Many times, the power of this lust is irresistible. Therefore, the mocking look on Walter's face must also have himself.

Anyway, in the face of his wife's infidelity, he feels the same as all the men in the world, no, it is precisely because he knows himself too well, and his feelings are more ironic than other men.

He was miserable, he was indignant. After much deliberation, he gave Katie two choices: either to divorce Charlie and marry her within a week, or to go with him to Mae Tam Province, where the plague occurred.

Because as a man with intelligence and the ability to think, he knows very well that Charlie is a selfish little person, and he can't marry Katie. Therefore, Katie can only go to Mae Tam Province with him. And The Meitan government will put her to death.

03 Vicious honest man

After coming to Mae Tam Province, he immediately went to work. Treat the sick every day, clean up the city, and do everything in your power to get the water people drink. He didn't care where he went or if what he did was dangerous, he dealt with Death 20 times a day.

After all, Walter was neither a doctor nor a missionary, just a bacteriologist, and no one ordered him to come, "He didn't come here because he couldn't bear to see a hundred thousand Chinese die of cholera, nor to study his bacteria." What the hell is he here for? Can Walter himself answer the question that Weedington asked?

What kind of devastating torture and cruel self-punishment is a man who is obsessed with life and marriage, who sleeps and eats during the day to help strange cholera patients, who tosses between ignorant villagers and ignorant local governments, and who is tired at night to deal with the sneering ridicule of his cheating wife?

"You see, you and I are the only people in this place who speak clearly and down-to-earth. Those nuns live in heaven, and your husband is in hell."

In the eyes of everyone, Walter is the zealous and selfless Bethune; in Katie's eyes, he is a boring and indifferent cruel husband; in his own heart, he is a prisoner of feelings, living every minute and every minute in the purgatory he forged.

Which is the real Walter and which one wears a gorgeous veil? If Katie hadn't cheated, would Walter have come to Mae Tam Province? If the selflessness of great love is motivated by the selfishness of small love, if the fearless sacrifice is to escape the condemnation of conscience, if the noble choice is mixed with the despicable purpose of putting people to death, then how do we judge?

A woman will not love a man because he is of high moral character, let alone the man who plays his own small calculations in the name of nobility.

Although Walter offered to send Katie away after she became pregnant, the previous viciousness was enough to destroy a lifetime of nobility.

Walter, a morally "good man," may have only this one flaw in his life, but it dooms him to neither win love from his wife nor salvation from God, and even in his own heart, he will never be able to live again.

The original victim became the perpetrator.

In Maugham, goodness is so fragile and humanity is so embarrassing.

Maugham once said: "All I have done is reveal the human characteristics that many writers have observed and do not want to make public, and what puzzles me the most about human beings is the contradiction of human nature."

Walter's tragedy as a "vicious honest man" is that he cannot let go and cannot get out of the prison he has built.

Unable to let go of love, but also hard to forget hate, he lived too tired and too heavy.

04 "The Dead Is the Dog"

"I just walked a difficult road. Now I'm all right. Overwhelmed, Walter finally sought relief with death.

Walter's hatred was more suffocating than love, and it could not be eliminated in the last moments of his life. The last thing he said before he died was: "The dead are dogs", what a gritted teeth regret! He hated his shallow and unfaithful wife, and despised himself who loved his wife deeply.

This is the story from Goldsmith's poem "Elegy": A well-meaning man adopts a dog in the city. At first, people and dogs live in harmony, but one day the two turned against each other, and the dog went crazy and bit people. Everyone expected that the bitten person would die, but on the contrary, the man survived and the dog died.

What a great irony!

Walter was not the grand duke of Bethune, who was selfless and single-minded in his desire to save people, nor was he a despicable villain who was extremely bad and incorrigible. Good and evil coexist in him, and in the end he is just a vulgar man who is hurt by love.

The meaning of "veil" in Walter is: veil is life, veil is humanity.

And life is inexhaustible, and human nature is always dark and deep.

The process of people entering life and entering society is the process of putting on the veil, so the veil cannot be torn off, it has grown on the face.