The Razor's Edge: Analysis of Major Characters
"The Razor's Edge" is a novel that delves into the complex lives of its major characters, each grappling with profound existential challenges. Larry Darrell, a former soldier, becomes introspective after his experiences in World War I, seeking deeper meaning in life through diverse spiritual journeys, ultimately leading to a humble life as a taxi driver. Isabel Bradley Maturin, initially engaged to Larry, embodies the struggles between love and materialism, marrying Gray Maturin when Larry chooses a path of self-discovery over financial security. Gray, an ambitious stockbroker, faces a dramatic downfall with the stock market crash, eventually finding healing through Larry's unconventional methods. Elliott Templeton, Isabel's uncle, represents the superficiality of high society, fixated on status and aesthetics, yet increasingly marginalized as he ages. Meanwhile, Sophie Macdonald's tragic descent into addiction and despair highlights the darker consequences of personal loss and societal pressures. The author, W. Somerset Maugham, serves as a reflective narrator, offering insights into the characters' lives while maintaining a non-judgmental perspective. Together, these characters illustrate a tapestry of human experience, exploring themes of existential quest, societal expectations, and the impact of personal choices.
The Razor's Edge: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: W. Somerset Maugham
First published: 1944
Genre: Novel
Locale: Chicago, Paris, and India
Plot: Psychological realism
Time: 1919–1944
Larry Darrell, a young American who flew with the Canadian Air Force in World War I. He is twenty years old at the beginning of the novel and in his forties by the end of it. Experiencing the horrors of war changes Larry: He becomes solemn and introspective, restlessly seeking answers to the ultimate age-old questions about life, death, God, and the nature of evil. Turning down the offer of a lucrative job, Larry spends several years in Paris reading anything he hopes may contain an answer to his questions. He works in a mine in France and a farm in Germany, lives in an ashram in India, and enters a Benedictine monastery in Bonn. At the end of the novel, he gives away all of his money and sails to New York to become a taxi driver.
Isabel Bradley Maturin, who is engaged to Larry Darrell at the beginning of the novel. She marries Gray Maturin when Larry refuses to return with her to Chicago. She is nineteen years old when the novel opens. She genuinely loves Larry but cannot think of marrying a man who will not work for a living. She has been brought up in luxury and has no intention of living without it. She adapts well to losing her fortune in the stock market crash, but that is easy to do, because she spends the Depression in her uncle Elliott Templeton's fashionable Paris apartment. Selfish and materialistic, she contributes to Sophie Macdonald's suicide by offering her liquor, knowing that Sophie is a recovering alcoholic.
Gray Maturin, a rising young stockbroker, Isabel's husband, twenty years old at the start of the novel. His father started him at the bottom of his brokerage firm, but by the end of the novel, Gray is running it. Like his father, Gray takes pride in looking out for his clients and believes that he is doing his part to make America prosperous and powerful. Gray loses everything in the stock market crash, however, and suffers a nervous collapse, which Larry Darrell cures with a technique he learned from an Indian yogi.
Elliott Templeton, Isabel's uncle, a social climber in his late fifties at the beginning of the novel. A snob who made his fortune dealing in art, Elliott sneers at his social inferiors, having finally climbed above them. Taking pride in his impeccable taste in fashion, cuisine, manners, and art, Elliott gives advice on all four throughout the novel. His only purpose in life is to hobnob with the European aristocracy, but as he ages, Elliott finds himself less and less in demand at their parties. His last act, while on his deathbed, is to send a haughty answer to a princess who snubbed him by not inviting him to her fancy ball.
Sophie Macdonald, a quiet, introspective girl, tall and thin, who grew up with Larry Darrell in Marvin, Illinois, and dies in debauched squalor in France near the end of the novel. She appears in the first chapter as a young adult, a friend of Isabel Bradley, at a dinner given by Isabel's mother. A few years later, she marries a lawyer, Bob Macdonald, and bears him a child who is killed with Bob in a car crash. Sophie, crazed with grief, flees to Paris, where she drowns her pain in alcohol, opium, and indiscriminate sex. Larry helps her to put aside this decadence for a while and plans to marry her, but jealous Isabel returns Sophie to her squalor by tempting her to drink again. Sophie disappears until the police find her dead, half-naked body in the river in Toulon, her throat cut.
W. Somerset Maugham, the author and narrator, who appears as a character in the novel. Maugham plays only a peripheral role in the lives of the other characters, but he is able to piece together their stories from conversations. Because he is a writer, the other characters trust him with their most intimate secrets, making him an ideal narrator. He possesses insight into human nature, and especially into Larry Darrell, that other characters lack: He is the first to realize the nature of Larry's search for answers, he comforts Elliott Templeton when others abandon him, and he identifies Sophie Macdonald's body and pays for her funeral in Paris. As narrator, Maugham is able to present the foibles of other characters without being judgmental.