Resumo de Of Human Bondage - somerset maugham

Of Human Bondage, by Somerset Maugham, is semi-auto-biographical, in the third person narrative. The whole macrocosm of life, its stages unfolding, is depicted through a microcosm. The protagonist is Philip Carey, who was orphaned, right from his birth, and was a posthumous child, his father being a surgeon. He was brought up by his uncle, a village schoolmaster, with a domineering, bigoted, Victorian, countryside attitude, having a meek wife, as was the unhealthy gender custom roles of the era. Philip?s natural sensitivity was all the more enhanced by his suppressed upbringing, his orphaned state and having a lame foot. His lameness remained a haunting nightmare, for the rest of his life, a handicap to achieve fulfilment. His struggles with internal and external realities, form the theme and content of this novel.His childhood was spent at the countryside. Nature blossomed his soulfulness. His insecurities lead him to a craving for human love, and this lead him to focus upon images where he could lavish his emotions, almost on a slavish hero-worship form.This was seen in his interaction with a school mate.From the countryside, there was a drastic change in the settings or background or backdrop. Philip rebelled against his uncle, and went off to Paris to study art. The bohemian lifestyle, and the refining of imagination through the mental struggles of an artist, enriched his dreamy soul all the more. Different characters from that cosmopolitan-cultural milieu, gave him both conflict and variety and spice.His own whims, and the capricious environment tasted from Paris, again brought out his sense of experiencing the novelty and adventure. He went off to London to become a doctor at St Thomas hospital. He studied there and worked too. During those years, a major chapter of his life was created. With all his experiences and accomplishments, he was still empty inside, searching for love, from someone who would love him for all his physical and mental shortcomings. He kind of tried this with Mildred a waitress, he met at a restaurant. She was far removed from his social, mental and intellectual faculties, yet her stand-offishness, holding her own ground but not on own dignity basis, kind of drew him towards her out of a magnetic curiosity. She was filthy and distasteful, with cheap tastes, as was expected from her common class, a rough ego emanating out from her. Philip?s own low self-worth and self-esteem, his natural humaneness, her ego challenging him, both in egoistical and patronising aspects, a kind of hunger, mixed with curiosity and perverse pleasure, for socio-psychologial diversifying individual to general experiments and occurrences, all co-mingled to bring him back repeatedly to Mildred. His destructive state with such low level company, automatically repelled him completely, to enable him to divert and free himself from her, but after a nerve racking experience. Her death also released him from this bondage. His interaction with patients made him burgeon too. A tryst with a cantankerous and unhappy doctor in a Cornish village, made him more sympathetic to problematic human nature.In this tapestry of his life, he was befriended by a Mr Athelny, with a large family of daughters, the eldest Sally, being fresh, innocent, pure and homely, captured his heart. He was romantically involved with her, was anxious, that an illegitimate child could be born, yet quite disappointed when informed that Sally was not impregnated.This was a final turning point in his life, coming face to face with himself and the principles of life. He was always freeing himself from one bondage to another, to get the taste of the new, to be uncaptured, but the bondages, one or the other, never left him. Rousseau?s quote forever remained true-?Man is in chains everywhere?. For this and man?s basic instincts, he discovered, he did not really want to be free and empty, but be bonded with the simple pleasures of life, strewn with complications, like a normal being.He achieved this by marrying Sally, becoming a family man, a man and a human being. A quote?s truth is proved from this: ?Man leaves home to search and finds it only when returning to it?

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