The Moon and Sixpence Based on the life of the painter Paul Gauguin, it is told in episodic form by the first-person narrator as a series of glimpses into the mind and soul of the central character, Charles Strickland, a middle aged English stock broker who abandons his wife and children abruptly in order to pursue his desire to become an artist. Presumably Strickland’s “moon” is the idealistic realm of Art and Beauty, while the “sixpence” represents human relationships and the ordinary pleasures of life.
Home / Questions / According to some sources, the title of which Somerset Maugham book comes from a review of his other novel Of Human Bondage in which the novel’s protagonist, Philip Carey, is described as “so busy yearning for X that he never saw the Y at his feet”?