William Somerset Maugham’s ‘the Lotus Eater’

Q Sketch the character of doubting Thomas Wilson. Is the name lotos-eater appropriate to him? Ans. William Somerset Maughams compelling short story The Lotus Eater paints his intrusive meeting with Thomas Wilson, the pivotal character of the story. A retired English bank mankindager, Wilson, who made the Italian island Capri his ingest abode, had a good deal of rumour going about him. No believer of all the palaver that went about him on the island and elsewhere, the author met him personally to discover his real character. When the author met him for the first time, Wilson, a middle-aged fellow, had already spent fifteen days on the island.As Wilson himself revealed to the author, he fell in rage with Capri at first messiness. Capri was an island of superb sights and sounds so much so that Wilson would enjoy them heartily until the last daylight of his life. After his retirement, he lived on an annuity that was to last for only twenty-five years, and he wished to live these years to his hearts content. He was a man who would live in the present caring subatomic about the future. To Wilson, he had justifiable reason to live by and by his own heart, since he had none on earth to worry about. He loved nature, music and books, which alone could feed the thoughts of a lonely man like him.He preferred leisure to work, for he believed that people worked only to obtain leisure. Small wonder, after the expiry of his annuity, Wilson fell on worst days and lost the will-power to carry his life any further. With no hopes to live for, Wilson once made an attempt to commit suicide. Though he survived the mortal attempt, he was no longer in his right mind. Then one fateful morning, he was found lying on the mountainside with his eyes closed for ever. The author recalled Wilson saying that he had come to the island on a woolgathering night.Hence, he assumed that Wilson had breathed his last while feasting his eyes on a breath-taking sight in the moonlight. It is not eworthy that the title of the story The Lotus Eater is remarkably appropriate to the character of Wilson. The sacred lotus eaters in Homers Odyssey were the mariners of Ulysses who forgot their friends and homes after consuming the lotos plant on Lotus-land. Having consumed the plant, the mariners broke into a unforgettable chorus. The chorus worded the anguish that came with toil, as also the joy that they had in that blissful life of leisure and inaction.