The book we introduce today is The Razor’s Edge written by Maugham, and Larry, the soul character in the book, is known as the spiritual world of Maugham himself. Now let’s take a look at who Larry is!

First, a brief introduction to the relationship between the characters and the background of the story: The author describes the beginning of the second World war, and the story begins in 1919 with Eliot, a very sociable man, his niece Isabella, a beautiful woman with a slightly baby-fat look, and the soul of the book, Larry, her fiance, a young man who went to war and became a pilot before he was 18. Other iconic supporting actors and actresses revolve around Larry, including Susan, who makes a living as an artist’s mistress; Courtney, who cheats at cards; and Sophie, who gets drunk and can have sex with anyone.

Larry is an orphan, adopted by Dr. Nelson, doesn’t want to go to college when he returns as a pilot, turns down a dream job as a broker, and wants to leave his fiancee and wander off to Paris, where his elders scrutinized him in a nonprofessional way.

Indeed, as he had hoped, after a heart to heart talk with Isabel, he got the support of his fiancee and went to Paris alone. In Paris, Larry did not accept any familiar invitations, nor did he participate in the high society, nor did he even give anyone his living address, which made the outside world very confused and felt that he did not fit in with the society. But finally, at Isabel’s request, he came to the hotel he was renting, a shabby hotel where there were no suspected mistresses. He was studying, and the only advantage of living there was that he was close to the National Library and the University of Paris, where he could go to study every day. When Isabel asked him when he would return to America, he once again denied this visible future, saying that he was still searching for the answer, and if he could not find the answer in his heart, he did not know when he would return to America. This answer obviously did not meet Isabel’s agreement, she could not understand what Larry was looking for. After this conversation, Isabel and Larry break off their engagement to find the answer to the problem of wealth creation in a poor hotel in a booming American economy.

Maugham and Larry’s adventure, ten years later, was in a small cafe, where he met Larry again, his coat patched and destituted, like a beggar on the street, but in good spirits. He described the day he left Paris.

He had been a collier, and he had met the card-cheating, glib, bitter, cynical Pole, Kausty, with whom he had left the mines, crossed Belgium by way of Munich and Liege, and entered Germany at Aachen, walking up to twelve miles a day, stopping whenever they came to a village they liked, and always finding an inn where they could sleep. You can always find a beer in a pub. They finally found work as farm labourers in a village in western Germany. While working as a hired hand, he is haunted by two women in his employer’s family, and eventually the widow of the army, Ellie, secretly climbs into his bed, so that he has to secretly escape from the village at night.

He traveled all over the world, to China, to Burma, to India, and during that time he learned five or six languages, met many people, and he spent five years in India, two years in the home of an Ashlama, which is what we call a retreat until he found the answer.

There is another magical event that needs to be mentioned in particular in the text, that is, Larry used a magic method to cure Gray’s headache, and here the author writes in a very mysterious way, and Larry just says that I just planted an idea in Gray’s mind, and this paragraph of description, I think is one of the most attractive parts of the book, Later, there is a short passage about Isabel in the car and having an orgasm just by seeing Larry’s arm. I don’t know if these two passages are related in any particular way, but I think maybe the author wants to highlight Larry’s magic!

His time in India began with a saint he knew, also known as a yogi. We have the impression that such an enigmatic figure should have some unusual symbols, but Larry only has two words to describe it, is “holy peace” is a wonderful feeling, but there are no words to describe it…

The book also has some brief introduction to the formation of Larry’s personality. At the age of 16, he worked as a pilot in France. He said that he was a normal boy at that time.

But fate is so colorful, he experienced death, even the death of a good friend, and he describes how he feels, using the word “shame,” because a young man who is alive and fearless suddenly becomes a mass of flesh and blood, without any dignity, like a marionette who has been cast aside.

After that, he began to think about life, why people live? What is the meaning of life? He wanted to find the answer, first he looked in books, but after four years of reading books, he found nothing… And then he meets Father Ensham and he goes back to the monastery with him and he has a good time there, but he still doesn’t find the answer, and he leaves.

In Alexandria, Larry meets an elder who can find rest in the absolute through invisible meditation, and they travel to India together. During this time, he learns a lot about Hindu theories and talks about Samsara. However, the text does not say what Larry actually believes, but describes through his own experience that one can experience the existence of God as well as joy or pain.

Here are two of Larry’s personal experiences, one of them at night meditation, about the series of figures he saw while focusing on the candle, real and detailed…

And the relief felt in Master Ganesha, in a moment of great joy, a tingle of pain from the soles of the feet to the forehead, a feeling of liberation from the body, beyond the grasp of human knowledge, suddenly all perplexities were opened up, joy to pain, an ecstasy, a feeling of dying rather than giving up, in short, there are no words to describe… In the book, it’s called the right outcome.

After this, Larry returned to the United States, and when he was asked what kind of life he wanted to live, his answer was “a life of calm, temperance, selflessness and self-abstinence.”

This is what I see Larry as, who believes that the highest human ideal is self-perfection.

There are a hundred Hamlets in a hundred minds, and the same goes for Larry. If you are really interested in this character, pick up the book and feel what he brings to your mind…