The Lotus Eater.
Title/ As a short story/ character of Wilson/ Comment on the ending/
Theme of leisure/ Was Wilson right in his decision?
"The Lotus Eater" is a short story by British author W. Somerset Maugham in
1935 and loosely based on the life story of John Ellingham Brooks. It was
included in the 1940 collection of Maugham stories The Mixture as Before.In
Greek mythology, the lotus-eaters were a race of people living on an island
dominated by the lotus tree, a plant whose botanical identity is uncertain. The
lotus fruits and flowers were the primary food of the island and were a narcotic,
causing the inhabitants to sleep in peaceful apathy. After they ate the lotus, they
would forget their home and loved ones and long only to stay with their fellow
lotus-eaters. Those who ate the plant never cared to report or return.Figuratively,
'lotus-eater' denotes "a person who spends their time indulging in pleasure and
luxury rather than dealing with practical concerns".
"The Lotus Eater" is one of the most heart-touching of Maugham 's short
stories. The mystery of character, a hallmark of him, forms the greatest
appeal of this story.
The first part of the story begins with the narrator being introduced to
Wilson by a common friend at a time when Wilson has spent most of his
allotted period of leisure.Wilson’s plan of putting an end to the end of
twenty-five years of annuity drives a shiver through the narrator’s spine and
rouses the reader’s tragic anticipation.
The story centers around the last part of the life of Wilson, a modern
lotus-eater, who left his job just at the age of thirty-five on viewing the
natural beauty of Capri, where he had come on a holiday trip. Transformed
into a slave of this beauty and desiring to indulge in a life of ease and
comfort, he forewent his retirement benefit and chose to buy a quarter of a
century of absolute comfort amid this natural beauty in exchange for all his
properties. He pawned his life with the belief that “Leisure…is the most
priceless thing a man can have”.
Wilson 's final days were tragic and poignant.The friend explains how
Wilson had made a great mistake in thinking that he would be able to end
his life at the end of his period of leisure. The long life of passivity had
snatched his power to work and his effort at suicide resulted in his losing
his mental sanity. He had to live at the mercy of his former servants after
being reduced to a pauper. But the manner of his death suggests that in
spite of his bestial life, he remained in his heart of hearts the same ardent
lover of nature’s beauty. He was supposed to have died enjoying the
beauty of the full moon rising between the two great rocks, a sight that had
made Wilson an ardent lover of Capri. Like the mariners accompanying
Ulysses who ate lotus and got converted into the resident’s lotus land,
Wilson drank the beauty of Capri and became attached to that place
forever. He was the modern lotus-eater, dying of the love for beauty.
Graced with Maugham’s brilliant prose style, an appropriate title, and
effective similes, Wilson’s ironical tale forms an appealing short story.
