Exploration of Maugham's The Razor's Edgeas an Orientalist Discourse
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Department of English
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.