Exploration of Maugham's The Razor's Edgeas an Orientalist Discourse

Abstract

This research presents the exploration of the Orientalist discourse in William Somerset Maugham's The Razor's Edge. In the novel, the narrator and the writer, Maugham tries to describe about the Hindu religion through the spokesperson Larry Darrell. Larry goes to India for spiritual search being fade up with American materialistic orientation. His friend Patsy's death in the First World War diverts him from materialism to spiritualism. But everywhere, mostly in India he presents himself as superior and others as subordinate to him. Though he claims to get illumination from his spiritual search, he returns to America where capitalistic society compels him to work. Other characters like Eliotte says that English people are the greatest people and Isabel also supports him saying they are the greatest and most powerful people in the world. Gray tries to know about the tigers, leopards and other exotic things of the Eastern world which is imprinted in the Orientalist thinker's mind. All these attitude and thinking pattern has given the points for exploration of the Orientalist discourse in The Razor's Edge. The textual analysis has clarified the claim made by the researcher that can be seen as the outcome of the colonial mentality and in broader sense Oriental discourse which was created to get power to show the Orieant and Orieantal people inferior.