————Reaction to the novel The Moon and Sixpences
“I recognized its social values, I saw its ordered happiness, but a fever in my blood asked for a wilder course. There seemed to me something alarming in such easy delights. In my heart was a desire to live more dangerously. I was not unprepared for jagged rocks and treacherous shoals if I could only have change——change and the excitement of the unforeseen.”
Surely it has been a long time since we last thought about our dreams. Nowadays people are always on the run, searching for fame, money or love. But few of us take time to think, where have our dream gone to? Do we still seize them in our hands? Do we have the courage to lay down the life burden and completely pursue them? Can we wake up in every morning rather survive than live the life?
We can make excuse like oh we are only stick to the reality or we don't have time. But the truth is, somebody did make an example for all of us. The main character in this book, Charles Strickland, did all those things that we cannot even think about. At the beginning of the story, the narrator judged Strickland as a tedious and plain-looking man who wore his evening clothes clumsily, had no social gifts. And there was no reason to waste one's time over him. Strickland was a broker on the Stock Exchange. He was not very rich, but owned a good position in the select society. He also had a happy family, with a charming wife and two pleasant children. Perhaps Strickland's intelligence was adequate to his surroundings, and that is a passport, not only to reasonable success, but still more to happiness. But apparently this was not a life that he wanted. He was dreaming about a vast sea, not a calm, silent and indifferent one, but a real sea with a violent storm.
Therefore, he left all of the happy things behind and stepped on the path that overgrown with brambles. “I tell you I've got to paint. I can't help myself. When a man falls into the water it doesn't matter how he swims well or badly. He's got to get out or else he'll drown.” He was obsessed with painting, and nothing could stop him from doing that, though his trousers were baggy, his hands were not clean, and his face, with the red stubble of the unshaved chin, the little eyes, and the large, aggressive nose, was uncouth and coarse. He was poor, starving and almost at the gate of death. In addition, he was tortured morally because of the search of technique of expression. Eventually he left the civilized world to an isolated island, where he finally found the peace of soul and the atmosphere which was beneficial to his creation. But misfortune again arrived at his life. Upon painting several astonishing works, he was told to have developed a lepriasis. During these days that haunted by the disease, he kept painting on the wall although he was gradually blind.
After reading this book, I can't get this scene out of my mind: In the deep end of an uncivilized island, an old man who was basically disfigured because of a fatal disease sat peacefully in a shabby house and listened to the screaming of the distant sea. The walls were filled with magnificent paintings but he couldn't see his works, he could only listen and feel. My heart burst with awe and revere, for he had finally found the dream peace he was searching for, passing through millions of paths that overgrown with brambles.
People all around the world are chasing something. Strickland, a cold-blooded man who put his heart only on art, however, was chasing his misfortune. More precisely, he was captured by dream on his path to misfortune. Maybe every single reputation of us means a self-bind, and only by losing can we truly approach the world of freedom. Therefore Strickland refused to be a husband, a father, a friend, a colleague, even a British. He got out of all these roles and followed his own heart to step into the art castle. The narrator once asked him about his children: “Aren't you fond of them? They are such awfully nice kids. Do you mean to say you don't want to have anything more to do with them?” He just answered: “I liked them all right when they were kids, but now they're growing up I haven't got any particular feeling for them.” Others may feel pathetic for his poverty, but he was a hero himself as long as he held his paintbrush.
This kind of man is awfully selfish and irresponsible. However, on the other hand, he was just a normal man who submitted to his dream, and that's where he was more different from others. When dreams struck people on their heads, they just fled in panic. They fled to fame and money, even anger and greed. But Strickland refused to be one of them, in other words, there were sixpences everywhere, he only raised his head to see the clear moon shining in the sky.
There are always some people in the world persistently pursuing the thing they love. It doesn't matter when to start, because dream can always lead us to the true meaning of life.
Of course the moon is far away from us, just like dream that we want to pursue. What's more, the process can be painful and tiring. However, as is known to us all, life is a one-way ticket. So, which way are you intended to choose? The dream path overgrown with brambles or the path that leads to sixpence?
