Title of The Lotus Eater by Maugham

The Lotus Eater

William Somerset Maugham

Question:

Title of The Lotus Eater

According to Longman's Dictionary of Contemporary English the word Lotus Eater means "a person who leads a lazy dreamy life and is not comcerned with the business of the world." A.S. Hornby in his Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Current English has defined it as a "person who gives himself up to indolent enjoyment." The title of the story The Lotus Eater is at once apt and illuminating as it has a direct bearing to the cemtral theme of the story and adequately indicates the outlook of the character of the hero Wilson. The very phrase 'Lotus Eater' is associated with Greek mythology and the second Homeric Epic. In Greek mythology Lotophagi were a race of people on the island dominated by lotus plant.

Maugham does not draw the idea of his story from the Homeric episode alone, he must have also consulted and drawn considerable points out of Tennyson's 'The Lotos-Eaters,' supposed to be sung in a chorus by the mariners of Ulysses. In fact Maugham has brilliantly used the Tennysonian interpretation and arguments in favour of his hero's deliberate choice between the life of leisure and that of toil. The emotion and philosophy in Tennyson's poem are basically same as that in Homer's Lotus eating episode in Odyssey.

Maugham's hero, Wilson, can be recognised prominently as the counterpart of Tennyson's choric singers, or a modern lotus eater. It should be noted that he is an individual, a single odd character, and not one of choric group. Wilson does not literally eat the lotus plant or flower of the mythical power. He is the lotus-eater in the metaphorical sense of the term. The natural beauty and romantic history of the Italian Island of Capri have cast a magical spell on him. Wilson is completely charmed by its tall rocks, mountains, moon-lit night, jabbering people, oleander in the hotel garden and above all, its promise of peace and leisure.

Like the mariners of Ulysses he is under a profound spell which makes him decide that the best thing in life would be to permanently withdraw from the compulsory daily duties of life, event at the age of 34, and spend the next 25 years in this island, feasting his eyes on its beauty and inhaling indolent peace.

Wilson believes in the philosophy of Tennyson's choric singers. He simplifies this philosophy thus: "Leisure", he said "If people only knew! The most priceless thing a man can have and they're such fools they don't even know it's something to aim at. Work? They work for work's sake. They haven't got the brains to realise that the only object of work is to obtain leisure."

The title, The Lotus Eater, has an unmistakable validity for our times. It carries a moral value of intoxicating pleasure, compulsive urge for which makes an escapist of a man. The drug-addicts of the present-day-world seek their world of unalloyed pleasure, a world away form the world of honest work and responsibility. They offer a parallel to the lotus-eaters of Greek mythology which supplies the basic idea of Maugham's story. William though he does not live like them in a world of preversion and illusion, he is a reckless escapist. Hence the title is appropriate for a story which deals with a modern lotus-eater.